We worry about providing Universal Basic Income because people might stop working, but here's a thought: maybe, just maybe, with a little financial security, people might actually pursue work they truly choose rather than work to just not die. Imagine that world for a moment.
🇳🇱
As someone who is strongly against UBI, and strongly supportive of welfare I can earnestly say people simply not working is not at all the reason I (or most people against UBI in my opinion) are against it.
The reason i am against it is because it causes people more harm than good. People who are in a position where they need assistance need to be given the tools to get out of their situation, and the help to get there needs to be conditional on this (and we should be spending the money that goes with that). Financial assistance should be conditional with mandatory job training or mental health therapy needed to help someone succeed, not just money.
In fact when there are underlying bad habits, as can often be the case, it is possible money can even make a persons condition worse and cause them to sleep farther into poverty.
I am not suggesting welfare in its current form be used. I am suggest it be conditional on one getting the training to no longer need welfare, in which case welfare will get you through that time,
And how it should work 🤔
The concept of ubi didn't pop up into existence because economists were bored, it was created to address the issues with the current version of welfare and its conditioning.
Yea that was the attempt and it fails miserably at achieving it. IT proposes a state that doesnt fix the underlying problem, just dumps an infinite firehose of cash at it hoping to alleviate the symptoms. Which is hugely problematic in so many ways.
I am a strong believer in addressing root problems,and not wasting those same resources fighting a raging fire with a squirt gun.
Nothing except an ever increasing GDP can ever even hope to thwart reality and it's obviously unsustainable to do that.
So either we give up capitalism or we accept this reality. If you give up capitalism, what do you replace it with? This argument has been had ad infinitum and the ultimate result is capitalism sucks but it's better than every other economy that's been tried. And no amount of "not real communism bro" can make the fact capitalism is the best we have right now any less of a true statement.
> The problem with your thinking is that in capitalism there are winners and losers, period. In nature it is the same. No amount of money will ever solve it because it is not a problem, it is simply reality.
Yea thats not true. In a properly function government which adopts a reasonable component of capitalism (no such thing as a pure capitalism), then everyone wins. Some win more than others, no doubt, but everyone wins. That isnt to say we currently have a good well rounded government, we dont, but if we did there would be nothing to fix.
Your incorrect premise relies on the zero-sum game fallacy of money, it is not a 0 sum game and it is trivial to demonstrate that (if it were we would all still be living in caves).
> Nothing except an ever increasing GDP can ever even hope to thwart reality and it's obviously unsustainable to do that.
Based on what? While a growing GDP is generally a good thing, the idea that it must occur to offset capitalism somehow is not something I can see any logic in. Quite the opposite, a growing GNP is an indication of wealth generation and overall a good indicator.
> So either we give up capitalism or we accept this reality. If you give up capitalism, what do you replace it with? This argument has been had ad infinitum and the ultimate result is capitalism sucks but it's better than every other economy that's been tried. And no amount of "not real communism bro" can make the fact capitalism is the best we have right now any less of a true statement.
Since your premise doesnt seem to line up with the facts, obviously your conclusions based on the axioms are similarly invalid unless we can resolve the axioms.
It is 100% true. I will not argue it with you, because it would be retarded to do so. People far smarter than me have proven it over and over and over again.
Read an economics textbook and apply some basic reasoning skills to reality.
There is no such thing as "capitalism with caveats". There is no such thing as "a government with social spending that never collapses". History proves me right too, by the way.
Also Laissez-faire capitalism. Might as well look that up too since you don't even seem to know that much.
> It is 100% true. I will not argue it with you, because it would be retarded to do so. People far smarter than me have proven it over and over and over again.
Thats fine, then dont waste my time making stupid arguments you have no desire to discuss. My posts are not your soap box, they are for conversations not you to lecture people and then be too lazy to even discuss your wildlly fringe stance.
> Read an economics textbook and apply some basic reasoning skills to reality.
Saying "read a text book" rather than actually being able to explain your own ideas is lazy, and quite frankly makes you look like a troll who adds no value to the conversation.Act like a mature adult or you can GTFO, we dont need your toxic shit here.
> There is no such thing as "capitalism with caveats". There is no such thing as "a government with social spending that never collapses". History proves me right too, by the way.
Saying more dumbass shit that isnt true isnt getting you anywhere.
> Also Laissez-faire capitalism. Might as well look that up too since you don't even seem to know that much.
I already have posts in my feed about this very topic and where I fall on the issue. Nice try with doubling down ont he toddler-level insults though, you can GTFO of here with that shit, the adults are talking.
I'm not educated enough to make any strong arguments here, i'm not an economist, but i reeeeally don't want to accept the idea of conditional welfare. It's always end up with something horrible and constant system abuse where people receive """help""" but live in poverty anyway, it consume shitload of money and do nothing :<
How is money along side free education help that "consume a shit load of money and do nothing".. when literally just giving them money for ever for the rest of their lives is somehow not? That makes no sense to me.
Yep it's a counterintuitive idea but ubi is actually could be cheaper:
"anyone can access the money without jumping through bureaucratic hoops, thus also theoretically making a UBI cheaper to implement than traditional welfare programs. The “poverty trap” created by traditional welfare options, which stop giving benefits after an individual reaches a certain income level, could be eliminated, and the stigma of receiving welfare would no longer be a factor"
No UBI isnt cheaper... It spends less money but gets you no solution, which is more expecive.
Cheap means value, not low cost. Paying more to solve the problem is cheaper than paying less to not solve it (and therefore need to payout for an entire persons life)
I dont want something that is the cheapest, I want to solve the problem, and will pay what it takes to do so.
I suppose our core disagreement is about which solution works at all. I don't think conditional welfare works, imo it's useless, and if i have to choose between conditional welfare and no welfare, i'll choose the latter 🤔
How would you know it doesnt work, it hasnt been implemented. What are you basing that off of? Right now welfare is not conditional, if your poor you get welfare, Which doesnt work, which proves that non-conditional aide doesnt work, so why would UBI (taking the current system to a more extreme state) suddenly start working?
Rather than doing more of the same that we already know doesnt work (unconditional help) perhaps try it the way I propose first so you actually have some data to judge it.
inb4: In my case im basing it off data, personal data in a way that isnt exactly the same, but its an educated decision. I spent my life taking many homeless and poor people into my house to get them off welfare. I've seen success and I've seen failure and im basing my position off what ive seen works.
> Right now welfare is not conditional
🤔
There are no unconditional support anywhere as far as i know, you always need to apply for it and match certain criteria.
How do you see your variant then?
What's difference between current conditioning and your proposed conditioning?
You are correct, we are talking about conditional in a very different sense of how it applied.
I am not talking about conditional in the sense that "I filled out paper work and am in poverty"that is obviously a condition no one should have any issue with. I am talking about the condition that you must be taking steps to get out of poverty to accept the money. In other words you must demonstrate you are taking higher education classes, a trade-skill class, job training, psychiatric help, basically whatever it is that is needed to get you out of poverty you must persue in order to get the welfare. All of these avenues must be included free of charge with welfare.
This does not exist. I grew up on welfare, from the day i was born till the day I got my own home at 15 years old, I was on welfare that entire time. There was no conditions placed on it in terms of anything my mom had to do to get out of welfare. The only condition is you were poor enough to need money, and you would get it. Which is the very reason my mom never got off welfare, in fact, she made it a point to stay on it because to get off of it she would actually have lost money due to the welfare gap (another issue that needs addressing).
So yea, conditional welfare, in the sense that I describe it doesnt exist. But UBI is closer to what we already have (non-conditional in terms of any effort you need to make on your part to get off of it, in fact its designed to keep you on it). So why take what we already have that is broken and crank it to 11 , rather than actually trying to solve the problem for once?
> But UBI is closer to what we already have
But nope! It is also a working solution to a problem you described, it don't create that "poverty trap" because no one will take your money away if you get a job, you just get more money. If you will find a good job, you eventually will contribute to system more than it pay to you.
Also, i expect the pressure on poor people that they must do something to prove they're not a camel will have a huge demotivation effect, people will just mimic the activity.
I think someone must run an experiment with such conditioning to see if it does anything useful.
> But nope! It is also a working solution to a problem you described, it don't create that "poverty trap" because no one will take your money away if you get a job, you just get more money. If you will find a good job, you eventually will contribute to system more than it pay to you.
This is called the welfare gap. It trivial to solve in either solution. As long as welfare is calculated continuously, rather than in steps, and the amount your welfare goes down is less than the proportion your income goes up, problem solved.
Also since welfare is conditional on you getting our of welfare it is self solving.
So this is a moot point.
> Also, i expect the pressure on poor people that they must do something to prove they're not a camel will have a huge demotivation effect, people will just mimic the activity.
You'd be wrong. Like I said after years of trying almost every tactic when helping the poor the fact is when I just gave them moneya nd put no conditions on them they literally freeloaded forever. It was only when I paid for their university, gave them real oppertunity, and put conditions on my help that i must seem them progressing that in almost every case the people got out of poverty.
AS someone myself who was in poverty who also followed that pattern, to me it seems quite obvious what the outcome of UBI is, and its not good.
I'm pro-ubi and anti-conditional, freemo is anti-ubi and pro-conditional.
I think implementing conditional welfare will end up with something horrible, and freemo think that implementing ubi will end up with something horrible 😀
There was field experiments with implementing ubi in different economic landscapes and it looks like it doing its job fine. Freemo's version wasn't tested at large scale, he only has his own personal experience and he say his variant is also doing its job fine, that's the sum of the whole thread.
IMO it's rather market-friendly. Socialists are trying to supply people "free" stuff by using centralized or semi-centralized planning, which lead to not optimal resource allocation. For example, we want all school kids to have a free ride on public transport. We count all school kids in some area and based on that allocating some money to fund it. But some of these kids simply don't need to use public transport, they rather need something else (e.g. food in school) but can't buy it because money allocated to solve their problems were already spent. So it will be more simple to just give them money so they could spend it on a thing they really need.
It also doesn't break pricing through the mechanics of supply and demand because the government doesn't spend money on things that citizens don't need.
The problem with socialist redistribution of wealth is not that it is redistribution in principle, but primarily that it works shit, it breaks the economy, and people are still poor.
If we had a working principle of "redistribution" that does help people instead just raising taxes and breaking the economy, it would be silly not to use it.
@lonelyowl13 @freemo @scottsantens >It also doesn’t break pricing through the mechanics of supply and demand because the government doesn’t spend money on things that citizens don’t need. I mean you say that, but look at what has happened since stimmy checks. Minimum wage would also be a decent example.
Can I say with some absolute certainty it won’t work? No, I can’t say that I cannot see the future. But if you look at all the times some government program that was intended to put money back into people’s pockets didn’t work, and not for lack of trying, I just don’t see it working out at all.
I mean, if we want to get rid of literally every other form of welfare, get rid of the entire model of central banking, and then dole out some kind of UBI I suppose that’s fine, but at that point we might as well go back to money for government projects. I.E. the government creates, say, an infrastructure project and people work on it and get paid directly by the government. Then things get done and no one has to worry about where it’s coming from or why. Otherwise, and admittedly this is just an educated guess, it will easily spiral into “why am I not getting more?” or “my standard of living isn’t high enough but I don’t want to work.”, thus increased taxes to make up the difference or worse debt on a personal level skyrockets, and we’re basically back to where we started.
But really I am just speculating. We could look at real life examples where the redistribution doesn’t work, but admittedly there has never been a government on this planet that has not eventually devolved into negative authoritarianism so there’s no way to say with absolute certainty we won’t get a literally endless supply of people who just want to do good for the people and have absolutely no personal stake in the outcome. Maybe with robots, but you can already see the gears turning to get rid of this possibility, so I doubt it.
@lonelyowl13 @scottsantens @freemo The longer term question is what do you do when (a) the economy does not NEED the labor output of many people and/or (b) a lot of people have no useful financial contribution they can make to the economy.
The current answer to that question seems to be "get rid of those people" which is bad.
There is a lot of social capital not being generated. People could add value there when they are not adding value to the financial economy.
@freemo @scottsantens I think you’re saying the same thing, that if people are given money without any strings attached then they will not start working but use that money for nefarious purposes. There’s been quite a lot of research showing that unconditional cash donations are very effective at easing extreme poverty, which counters your point that it makes things worse: https://poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-changing-debate-giving-cash-people-living-poverty
> I think you’re saying the same thing, that if people are given money without any strings attached then they will not start working but use that money for nefarious purposes.
No I wouldnt go that far at all. I think most people who are poor have very poor financial hygene. It is not nefarious, or even intentional. They probably spend the money on things they feel really are the important and right things to spend money on, when in fact it isnt
It also depends ont he amount, at minimal levels and among the poor it may be spent on food, which is a good purchase, but doesnt help get the person out of poverty, so in those cases its less about spending hygiene and more about needing more resources (like education/training) and not about the money.
> There’s been quite a lot of research showing that unconditional cash donations are very effective at easing extreme poverty
Yes there has, and thats my point, simply easing poverty is treating the symptoms not the problem, and requires and infinite infusion of money to sustain never resolving the problem. We dont want to "ease poverty" we want to break people free of poverty all together, to not **need** the financial help at all in the end. Easing poverty with an endless firehose of cash doesnt accomplish that.
@freemo @jkxyz @scottsantens You can always tell when someone's never been poor because they say things like "most people who are poor have very poor financial hygene."
I grew up in extreme poverty that continued into adulthood. I lived in the ghetto, on welfare in section 8 housing in a home with my grandparents, cousins, uncle, and mother all in the same small home.
Thank you for the QED though regarding your own bias.
@freemo @jkxyz @scottsantens You might be the exception that proves the rule. But I do wonder how representative the samples you've taken are of financial hygiene for people in different income brackets.
It would be a tricky thing to show in an experimental objective fashion. But i alw
So pointed out in thread ive taken in some dozen poor homeless people over my life and got them back on their feet. Myself now being financially successful in life and having learned to get out of poverty i feel it is important to help others do the same.
Having been in poverty and helped .any others get out id say i have a far better sampling than most people at least.
@freemo @BernieDoesIt @jkxyz @scottsantens Poverty will lead to improved money management skills. Before I started college I bought around $400 dollars in hand tools and a laptop. It took a lot of saving up to buy but good hand tools are an investment that pay themselves off.
I still have those tools and that laptop. A Craftsman 354 piece Mechanics Tool Set and some Toshiba Satellite with an AMD C-50 "Ontario" APU.
Poverty is something that I've never been able to escape. It gets rough but I would like to think it will all pay off one day. I can only say stay sharp, say nawt. One needs every bit of leverage they can get.
Absolutely. There is no doubt that actually providing real assistance is a more nuanced and complex thing to do than just piling a bunch of paper bills on someone.
But something that is simple, that doesnt fix the problem (and in fact makes it worse) is not a good argument for the simpler approach. Solving problems for real takes more effort and nuance, but since it actually stands a chance of solving problems (and hopefully with improvement more so over time) its still the way to go.
This is a big problem with society in almost everything, they deny things simply due to complexity in excahange for something simple that isnt a solution at all.
@icedquinn No, I dont care if people get cash for food or a "gift card". its not about if they get the money or not, its about the conditions placed on that money. We will give you money (in whatever form, including cash) but only if you go to free job training, or go to university, or go to a trade school, or go to a psychiatrist. You do the things you need to do to ensure you are less likely to need welfare in the future, and then youll get whatever resources you need.
unemployment benefits is a bit different than poverty based welfare. Im not even trying to address unemployment, benefits, thats another ball of wax we would need to address on its own.
realistically what i worry about looks more like HUD housing's issue. when the state says we'll subsidize up to 500$ a month, all the housing here went up by exactly 500$ a month. the market just sees the free money as free real estate and adapts to soak it all. so ubis keep working well in limited episodes where the market doesn't get the chance to figure out how to soak it all, but i'm fairly sure everyone's rent would go up the day ubi happened, probably by however much it was :/
Farmer's markets can't cover that cost plus they need the extra infrastructure to recieve yes/no lists for products and all that garbage and likely inspections
> i think the typical objection to ubi is just a trauma response. "i had to scrape salt off the roads for six cents a day so you should too!!"
There could a bit of people who think that.. i mean there are plenty of grump old crumudgeons.
But of all the people I've debated UBI with, the ones that were against UBI were largely against it for the reasons I've stated, that it enables bad habits rather than fixing them. Not saying poor people are drug addicts, but its a similar mentality, you give a drug addict cash all you do is enable their bad habit, you pay for their rehab you might actually fix their problem. Most poor people in my experience were never taught the skills they need to get out of poverty. With the right skills its easy (I've done it for myself and many other people), but obtaining those skills are non-trivial. Worse yet most poor people are taught its not the skills that is the problem but the system is just against them, so quite often they will push back on the very things they need to do to fix the problem.
In short, more money tends to make poor people just reinforce their bad habits and makes things worse not better most of the time.
> you pay for their rehab you might actually fix their problem.
the eternal belief of people with no understanding of drug addiction :ablobcatderpy:
The beleife of a person who has taken in homeless drug addicts into his own home and have a remarkably good track record of them leaving sober and self-sufficient actually.
I grew up in a family of drug addicts (heroin & crack)... I know drug addiction all too well as someone the victim of it without being a drug addict myself. I am probably uniquely experienced to talk abotu getting out of poverty and addiction as I've personally worked with so many people in that respect.
@freemo I've never seen any argument for folk not working when getting UBI, but that it sits under incomes as a financial safety net for most cases. Some cases may need more money or other forms of welfare but UBI would catch most cases.
I agree, i neve rheard the argument of not working used against UBI. Actually i have heard that argument, but it is always int he form of those for the concept fabricating it as an argument of those against. I never legitimately heard it used as an argument against.
As for it being a safety net, in theory sure. But considering the harm it does as I already explained in thread, and considering there are non-harmful ways to accomplish the same safety net. Also considering it isnt really sufficient even as a safety net for most, I simply cant support the idea under this premise.
@freemo It is too easy to mess it up and there are pitfalls too. The UK 'universal credit' is an example.
@SteelFolk Again, easy and not a solution, vs harder and actually a solution... yea its easier to mess up when you actually try to solve problems (rather than just opening up a hose of money which is hard to screw up, other than not solving anything and making things literally worse).
Yea solutions mean they need to be done right, and thats a given.
@freemo Yes, most of them feature a desire to make them punitive. We moved on from 'debtors prison' and workhouses, but only just. There remains a view that folk will work harder to avoid an unpleasant system but they never have.
@SteelFolk Punitive how exactly? I've certainly heard a few callous things before, but never a **common** stance where it should be punitive.
My own stance is not there there are punishments. Do what is required of you (like enroll in school for free),a nd get the money as long as your going. If you stop going you dont get punished other than not receiving the benefits you got for going.
I'd also make the absolute minimal level of food needed not to die (soup kitchens) plus a cot in a gym with 100 other people to sleep on as always available no questions asked. But if you want a home and food you buy yourself and some of the basic needs beyond just keeping you alive, yea that should have conditions.
@freemo There are some who believe it should be a deterrent and so designed against 'scroungers'. Sometimes this is said openly in the UK.
@freemo The problem is that it becomes more important to prevent mis-use than to make it work for its purpose. Since there are always folks smart enough to freeload, everyone is treated as guilty of the intent. This deters legitimate claimants.
Bruh. Let's maybe go total anarcho-capitalism with no welfare? Honestly, it will be more efficient and friendly to poor people.
> it causes people more harm than good.
The shitty conditional welfare just lock poor uneducated people out of jobs. For example, someone have no job and therefore receives unemployment benefits. If this person finds a job, they will no longer receive unemployment benefits. But they only have an option to apply for a shitty job with salary lower than their unemployment benefit, therefore, it is not profitable for them to look for a job at all. This (and high minimum wages) is the exact mechanics that cause ghettos in france.