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What would the point them taxing you if they going to give you £1600 a month.
Universal basic income to be trialled
- Thread starter JonRGV250
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What would the point them taxing you if they going to give you £1600 a month.
Soldato
There was another concept I came across, something like a work guarantee. It works sort of like a UBI but it's contingent on you spending a good chunk of your time somehow productively. Maybe you have to justify your activity as somehow socially useful.
E.g. maybe you're volunteering somewhere or perhaps it's in starting an enterprise of some kind, maybe it's caring for someone. Presumably this would also create a lot of work in some large-ish bureaucracy to verify that people are actually doing something with it.
But essentially the concept is that if you're doing some work, any kind of labour, the government will pay you a basic amount for doing so.
E.g. maybe you're volunteering somewhere or perhaps it's in starting an enterprise of some kind, maybe it's caring for someone. Presumably this would also create a lot of work in some large-ish bureaucracy to verify that people are actually doing something with it.
But essentially the concept is that if you're doing some work, any kind of labour, the government will pay you a basic amount for doing so.
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The social credit score.
Here's £1600. Be nice to society and you will have a good score to do things with it. If you are bad bye bye social score bye bye free £1600.
Here's £1600. Be nice to society and you will have a good score to do things with it. If you are bad bye bye social score bye bye free £1600.
Soldato
Sensitive much, but you are right it won't work over here.
As it is called universal, everyone gets it. I remember the adage give everybody a pound today. Tomorrow there will be one millionaire and a million broke people.
The logistics of it, making sure there are enough rules and making sure that everybody obeys them, it is the command economy to beat all previous command economies. We will all be consuming soylent green in no time. I know that I prefer good old tested capitalism.
Soldato
Its kind of assumed so yes.
But that in itself would have to be a crucial part of the whole UBI implementation.
You would need to as I said earlier ensure you had enough but not too much supply of labour to meet demand in the economy.
Maybe everyone would need to do so many days work a year as part of their UBI. You could for example make that performing environmental activities (such as cleaning rivers/streams), litter picking, planting trees etc etc
Maybe have it as a sign up type thing so you can pick the things you would be best skilled to perform.
Hell I would even allow a pay to opt out thing. Dont want to do your 30 days sure, allow others to sign up for me and get extra based on the people who pay to opt out.
IF automation and AI reduces the demand of labour by say 50% then we would want to try to ensure that 50% could be relatively fairly made available to all.
You could for example hard cap hours, to say 20 per week per person, and / or penalise employers who used only a small workforce with a high average hours with an increased tax burden.
There is certainly a hell of an opportunity to rewrite the way we work. However what pulls me back from optimism is the likes of Rees Mogg and Hunt who want people back in offices commuting and sitting at desks.
I don't think we have a hope in hell with people with those types of mind set creating the environment in which UBI would operate!
Caporegime
For most people, it will be more like, I'll do nothing and I will be fappy.
Clearly you don't do it by taxing at 100%, because that would be bloody stupid.
UBI is redistributive. The poorest are better off. The middle earners are no different. The wealthiest pay more.
You save a huge amount from simplified benefits.
You do away with tax allowances, so you start paying tax once you start work, but adjust bands to so higher earners/wealth holders pay more.
You tax the corporate entities that are automating away manual jobs.
Basically, you don't do it in isolation, you do it as part of a wholesale change in the economy.
We're getting very close to the point where it becomes more economical to have machines do many jobs that are currently keeping people employed, so it has to happen at some point.
There are a number of challenges that need addressing, particularly regional differences and how that would affect local economies and labour markets.
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Caporegime
I think we are underestimating the human desire to create or enjoy things.
There will be numerous untapped creative potential currently swallowed by those people being forced to take jobs they don't enjoy just to survive.
Imagine being able to do something you are passionate about, but has poor earning potential, because you are covered by UBI, people would be much happier.
There is also the inherent greed/desire for more aspect, some people are just motivated/ambitious, maybe you do have enough to go on the odd holiday, but now you want to do a fancier holiday, well then you would need additional income on top of your UBI.
We can't just assume that 100% of people would be happy living their entire lives on just £1.6k/month and nothing more.
There will be numerous untapped creative potential currently swallowed by those people being forced to take jobs they don't enjoy just to survive.
Imagine being able to do something you are passionate about, but has poor earning potential, because you are covered by UBI, people would be much happier.
There is also the inherent greed/desire for more aspect, some people are just motivated/ambitious, maybe you do have enough to go on the odd holiday, but now you want to do a fancier holiday, well then you would need additional income on top of your UBI.
We can't just assume that 100% of people would be happy living their entire lives on just £1.6k/month and nothing more.
Associate
Sounds great however in reality this is more likely to happen:
But it is a lot. I mean it's a lot for doing nothing.
Its a lot. For doing nothing at the direct. Cost of others doing 37 hour weeks.
Its particularly a lot of its per person and you live in a house of 2+ adults.
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Meanwhile in the real world it's going to be dog eat dog still and people will still try to make as much money as they can.
We are all scrambling over each other to earn a better wage, be happy, plan ahead, more assets, bigger lifestyle
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We are all scrambling over each other to earn a better wage, be happy, plan ahead, more assets, bigger lifestyle
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Soldato
One of the big things we're seeing at the moment is that AI is coming for "meaningful" or artistic work moreso than anything else at the moment. Will people with free time want to spend their time on creative pursuits when the machines have shown they can do it better? Or will it start to lose its appeal?
Caporegime
Again though, we are all looking at it purely from our own situations.
There are people who want to start a family, but legit cannot afford it, or maybe they need expensive IVF but can't afford it.
UBI will give people who want to start families the ability to do so, and we know how the birth-rate is currently doing.
Caporegime
I actually think there will be a run on human created content, like literal organic products in a way.
Yeah the AI of the old sci fi was robots. It's all the non physical work it's Coming for first.
Especially where precision isn't necessary.
Anything that's "complete" but doesn't have to be perfect, AI will be gunning for first.
Also, anything entire rules based. If you can do it in excel? It's probably AI-able!
Yes for sure. It will help a lot. Just not sure if the finance is there. There won't be loads like myself. But I think there will be enough that the tax load on the wealthy will be too great to pay for it.
You'd have to tax corporations much, much more.
I'd place a bet on it being a failure.
Maybe I've missed it. Or maybe it's not done. But do we know a true cost (factoring in simplifying benefits) to actually give everyone 1.6k per month?
Do we know how much tax would have to be levied on the "rich" to to pay for it?
19k*40mln (rough guess over 18 in the UK)
Not far off a trillion a year!
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Man of Honour
The current socioeconomic system is wholly dependent on two things that are completely unsustainable - a continuous increase in population (because it's a form of Ponzi scheme) and a lot of jobs with low pay (the modern version of the peasantry, just with the farming part removed).
A continuous increase in population is obviously impossible. If a reasonable standard of living is possible, population decreases without other externally imposed pressures (e.g. religion).
Automation will continue to increasingly remove ever more paid work. Why would a profit-driven organisation pay a person to do work a machine can do faster and cheaper? The only reason is if the upfront costs of purchasing the automation are high enough for the endemic short-termism of business to deter the switch. And even that's only temporary.
If either of those requirements for the current system fail, the system fails. Both are failing and the failure is increasingly imminent and increasingly impossible to ignore. People who want to ignore it are reduced to ignoring the population issue completely and claiming to believe that completely new paid work will automagically appear from nothing, in a form that nobody can describe in any way.
So radical change will happen and it will happen quite soon. The only question is the nature of the change. Collapse of civilisation? Most people dying as they're no longer required as labour, with the elite finally being free of the necessity of having the poor around making the place look untidy? Extinction of humanity as humans are superseded by machines? Some workable solution humanity cobbles together at the last minute? Is UBI and the associated radical changes to society that it requires that workable solution?
A continuous increase in population is obviously impossible. If a reasonable standard of living is possible, population decreases without other externally imposed pressures (e.g. religion).
Automation will continue to increasingly remove ever more paid work. Why would a profit-driven organisation pay a person to do work a machine can do faster and cheaper? The only reason is if the upfront costs of purchasing the automation are high enough for the endemic short-termism of business to deter the switch. And even that's only temporary.
If either of those requirements for the current system fail, the system fails. Both are failing and the failure is increasingly imminent and increasingly impossible to ignore. People who want to ignore it are reduced to ignoring the population issue completely and claiming to believe that completely new paid work will automagically appear from nothing, in a form that nobody can describe in any way.
So radical change will happen and it will happen quite soon. The only question is the nature of the change. Collapse of civilisation? Most people dying as they're no longer required as labour, with the elite finally being free of the necessity of having the poor around making the place look untidy? Extinction of humanity as humans are superseded by machines? Some workable solution humanity cobbles together at the last minute? Is UBI and the associated radical changes to society that it requires that workable solution?
The Issue with AI content is the speed at which you can create it, you essentially flood the market and make it hard for HCC stuff to be found. Places like artstation ask people to tag AI work so that people can filter it out, if they choose. But then it leads to no visibility on AI work, so the prompters lie and say it was created without AI and then we are back to square one.
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Caporegime
If we have standards for stuff like organic food, tracking back to source, stuff like that can be implemented for AI generated things.
People pay more for bespoke hand-crafted furniture than Ikea flat-pack, who's to say the same won't be true for other creative works.