There’s a lot of propaganda around basic income that would have you believe they don’t work. Except every experiment we’ve seen with it has shown it does work.
I’ll never understand how a significant amount of the population are convinced trickle down economics works, and that the people with more money than they can spend somehow will spend more…
But the people who run out of money between every pay day won’t spend their 1k a month back into the economy
Many to most people have an irrational need to falsely believe that the world and society is fair. That they earned what they have, and that those who aren’t getting their basic needs met did something to deserve their suffering. You can see this indignity up close in asking someone who came from economic stability if they paid for their own college. They’ll dance around and talk about the part time job they did for supplemental income to hilariously attempt equate their plight with those that had to take on indentured servitude student loans or simply couldn’t manage the expense and became understandably disillusioned.
Think of all the derogatory, punitive sentiments people say about our massive homeless and prison populations. As long as those people all deserve their suffering, the world makes sense to the weak minded. These are the same people who think billionaires are billionaires because of extraordinary work ethic, rather than social status, access to willing capital investment, and the willingness to exploit others for the value they generate.
Many to most people aren’t willing to admit that we only have control over ourselves, and that usually isn’t nearly enough to overcome the circumstances that the external world imposes on us. It allows us very occasional opportunities to influence/navigate branches within those circumstances, but the lotteries of birth, socioeconomic status, race, gender, location, etc very much limit practical trajectories. Using power over yourself might allow you to go up a class with concerted effort, from poverty to lower, lower to lower middle, etc, but our society and civilization in general is deeply unfair, and by the design of its architects. You don’t tend to start as a shelter orphan and end as someone society would consider a winner. In the same vein, children of said winners almost can’t fail being born into the little self-protecting owner club.
While it can’t be eliminated, addressing income inequity would mitigate these problems to some degree. We just refuse to because that would be unfaiiiir, right?
To privilege, equality feels like oppression. and sadly, as in most recorded history, privilege makes the rules.
They’re told that neoliberalism works by every major political party, every for-profit media company, every lobby group and every sleazy think tank.
It’s incredibly persuasive. Most people can’t even name it, let alone oppose it. The moment someone has even the slightest chance of challenging it, every single one of those organisations unites with a solidarity the rest of us can only dream of.
Because for them, “left vs right” is a pantomime. They don’t actually disagree on anything of consequence, they’re just jostling for position at the trough.
And they’re not just apathetic about those people struggling to hold on until pay day, they celebrate it. Those people have had every possible penny of wealth squeezed from them, starting it on its march back to a billionaires pocket, because that’s the way money actually flows.
This is not true, though it depends what you mean by “work.” For example, this study found no statistically significant increase in employment. UBI puts unconditional money in the hands of more people. That can be seen as a good thing in and off itself, but it has hardly proven to improve quality of life metrics across the board. Much more research is required for this.
I support UBI, but I think we are many decades away from public support. The reason is that any moves to implement it today will require a) huge tax increases, and b) blocking politicians buying welfare votes. The first is incredibly unpopular today. By the latter I mean that the current welfare system is a maze of tax credits, incentives, and election bribes. More money for special interest groups, or the disabled, or the elderly. One of the reasons UBI can work is stripping the HUGE administrative overhead from the system and giving every adult the exact same money. I just don’t think these special interest groups will accept this. They’ll demand their group be given more money. They’ll demand that parents be given more money, or the disabled, or the elderly. And politicians will acquiesce. Then we’re back to the same broken, corrupt welfare system but now it costs 5x as much.
How is this supposed to be some “gotcha?” You claimed that UBI did not increase quality of life with your only source stating that it had no effect on employment. What does employment inherently have to do with quality of life?
I didn’t claim work is a requirement for QOL. Instead of addressing my comment, you’re hyper-focusing on a grammatical disagreement which is completely immaterial. Since you lack any substantive disagreement, I take this to mean you agree with my premise.
It’s it just the thing to call anything you disagree with propaganda now?
There are problems with this at scale that just don’t exist in small experiments.
Does it really take research to say “more money=more better for people with no money?”
That’s not the issue, and won’t be the issue with full scale implementation. The problem arises when everyone knows that literally everyone has X extra dollars to spend every month, and they think those dollars rightfully belong to them. You can’t simply hand out extra money to every person and expect that to solve any societal problems. If you’re trying to address systematic problems then you need to actually address those problems. UBI is a crutch that quickly loses it’s effectiveness, but can’t be dropped once it’s no longer effective.
Given their claim is about large-scale (well beyond the scale that had been experimented with*) implementation, obviously there’s no research on it. I think there is a bit of an issue of inflation reducing the effectiveness of the money, particularly in the short-term. New houses aren’t just going to pop up overnight just because every homeless person has more money and many vacant homes aren’t in the locations or price ranges they can afford. If you make macro 101 level assumptions, long-term with more demand for basic goods, its possible that their prices will be higher than people going without those basic necessities if costs increase with increased production. But they could also be cheaper long-term depending on the economies of scale. I think real-world assumptions would tend towards higher prices because real pricing is more about what people will pay than how much it costs to produce, but if you’re using those assumptions, you’re still going to have an equilibrium where more people are getting more basic goods, not an equilibrium where the money just doesn’t do anything anymore.
*some people will always just claim it hasn’t been done on a large enough scale for the effects they worry about to materialize until its don’t federally in the US, the entire EU, or some similar scale.
Ignoring the fact that ubi addresses a systemic problem. Yes, other problems need to be addressed, but when you’re hungry and homeless, income can quickly address immediate needs.
There’s a lot of propaganda around basic income that would have you believe they don’t work. Except every experiment we’ve seen with it has shown it does work.
I’ll never understand how a significant amount of the population are convinced trickle down economics works, and that the people with more money than they can spend somehow will spend more…
But the people who run out of money between every pay day won’t spend their 1k a month back into the economy
Many to most people have an irrational need to falsely believe that the world and society is fair. That they earned what they have, and that those who aren’t getting their basic needs met did something to deserve their suffering. You can see this indignity up close in asking someone who came from economic stability if they paid for their own college. They’ll dance around and talk about the part time job they did for supplemental income to hilariously attempt equate their plight with those that had to take on indentured servitude student loans or simply couldn’t manage the expense and became understandably disillusioned.
Think of all the derogatory, punitive sentiments people say about our massive homeless and prison populations. As long as those people all deserve their suffering, the world makes sense to the weak minded. These are the same people who think billionaires are billionaires because of extraordinary work ethic, rather than social status, access to willing capital investment, and the willingness to exploit others for the value they generate.
Many to most people aren’t willing to admit that we only have control over ourselves, and that usually isn’t nearly enough to overcome the circumstances that the external world imposes on us. It allows us very occasional opportunities to influence/navigate branches within those circumstances, but the lotteries of birth, socioeconomic status, race, gender, location, etc very much limit practical trajectories. Using power over yourself might allow you to go up a class with concerted effort, from poverty to lower, lower to lower middle, etc, but our society and civilization in general is deeply unfair, and by the design of its architects. You don’t tend to start as a shelter orphan and end as someone society would consider a winner. In the same vein, children of said winners almost can’t fail being born into the little self-protecting owner club.
While it can’t be eliminated, addressing income inequity would mitigate these problems to some degree. We just refuse to because that would be unfaiiiir, right?
To privilege, equality feels like oppression. and sadly, as in most recorded history, privilege makes the rules.
They’re told that neoliberalism works by every major political party, every for-profit media company, every lobby group and every sleazy think tank.
It’s incredibly persuasive. Most people can’t even name it, let alone oppose it. The moment someone has even the slightest chance of challenging it, every single one of those organisations unites with a solidarity the rest of us can only dream of.
Because for them, “left vs right” is a pantomime. They don’t actually disagree on anything of consequence, they’re just jostling for position at the trough.
And they’re not just apathetic about those people struggling to hold on until pay day, they celebrate it. Those people have had every possible penny of wealth squeezed from them, starting it on its march back to a billionaires pocket, because that’s the way money actually flows.
Meanwhile, neoliberalism never works but we’re determined to stick with it until it’s finished wiping out life on earth.
The overlords don’t want you to be able to easily quit your job. Same thing with health insurance.
This is not true, though it depends what you mean by “work.” For example, this study found no statistically significant increase in employment. UBI puts unconditional money in the hands of more people. That can be seen as a good thing in and off itself, but it has hardly proven to improve quality of life metrics across the board. Much more research is required for this.
I support UBI, but I think we are many decades away from public support. The reason is that any moves to implement it today will require a) huge tax increases, and b) blocking politicians buying welfare votes. The first is incredibly unpopular today. By the latter I mean that the current welfare system is a maze of tax credits, incentives, and election bribes. More money for special interest groups, or the disabled, or the elderly. One of the reasons UBI can work is stripping the HUGE administrative overhead from the system and giving every adult the exact same money. I just don’t think these special interest groups will accept this. They’ll demand their group be given more money. They’ll demand that parents be given more money, or the disabled, or the elderly. And politicians will acquiesce. Then we’re back to the same broken, corrupt welfare system but now it costs 5x as much.
Why and how should quality of life be contingent upon employment?
According to most fucked up people in this country:
“Why shouldnt you struggle when I am struggling? Nobody gets hands out.”
It’s not. Please re-read my comment.
OK, I did. It still says what it did before. You state that UBI didn’t significantly increase employment, and then equated that with quality of life.
No I didn’t. It would help if you would just accept what I am telling you is my argument instead of weak-ass gotchas.
How is this supposed to be some “gotcha?” You claimed that UBI did not increase quality of life with your only source stating that it had no effect on employment. What does employment inherently have to do with quality of life?
I didn’t claim work is a requirement for QOL. Instead of addressing my comment, you’re hyper-focusing on a grammatical disagreement which is completely immaterial. Since you lack any substantive disagreement, I take this to mean you agree with my premise.
Since you’re being so disingenuous, I’m just going to assume no argument you make us done in good faith. Fuck along, now.
Whatever will we do?! We can’t possibly require billionaires and corporations to pay their fair share!
Reasonable opinion that’s not completely, unflinchingly left-wing? Here? Go to the penalty box and think about what you’ve done.
Seriously, I had not considered what interest groups would do.
The right: “How come them lazy blacks get the same I get?!”
The left: “How come privileged whites get the same as black people?”
Great examples! Both of these would be popular narratives, and whoever wins would end up putting their thumb on the “UBI” scales.
It’s it just the thing to call anything you disagree with propaganda now?
There are problems with this at scale that just don’t exist in small experiments.
Does it really take research to say “more money=more better for people with no money?”
That’s not the issue, and won’t be the issue with full scale implementation. The problem arises when everyone knows that literally everyone has X extra dollars to spend every month, and they think those dollars rightfully belong to them. You can’t simply hand out extra money to every person and expect that to solve any societal problems. If you’re trying to address systematic problems then you need to actually address those problems. UBI is a crutch that quickly loses it’s effectiveness, but can’t be dropped once it’s no longer effective.
Why don’t you link to peer reviewed research on the subject then if you’re so confident.
Given their claim is about large-scale (well beyond the scale that had been experimented with*) implementation, obviously there’s no research on it. I think there is a bit of an issue of inflation reducing the effectiveness of the money, particularly in the short-term. New houses aren’t just going to pop up overnight just because every homeless person has more money and many vacant homes aren’t in the locations or price ranges they can afford. If you make macro 101 level assumptions, long-term with more demand for basic goods, its possible that their prices will be higher than people going without those basic necessities if costs increase with increased production. But they could also be cheaper long-term depending on the economies of scale. I think real-world assumptions would tend towards higher prices because real pricing is more about what people will pay than how much it costs to produce, but if you’re using those assumptions, you’re still going to have an equilibrium where more people are getting more basic goods, not an equilibrium where the money just doesn’t do anything anymore.
*some people will always just claim it hasn’t been done on a large enough scale for the effects they worry about to materialize until its don’t federally in the US, the entire EU, or some similar scale.
Elimination of the stock market would address a lot.
Ignoring the fact that ubi addresses a systemic problem. Yes, other problems need to be addressed, but when you’re hungry and homeless, income can quickly address immediate needs.