I must be honest, most of the laziest people I've ever worked with have all been Brits. We have far too much employee protection here, people get paid to be lazy. Add in an element if risk to the laziness and I suspect it'll die down rather rapidly.
Universal basic income to be trialled
- Thread starter JonRGV250
- Start date
I must be honest, most of the laziest people I've ever worked with have all been Brits. We have far too much employee protection here, people get paid to be lazy. Add in an element if risk to the laziness and I suspect it'll die down rather rapidly.
Honestly, that smacks of "no way is a poor person having any of my money".
As a matter of principle why should a 'poor person' be entitled to my money?
There will always be some cases such as thoose who are severely disabled or support for thoose made unemployed, who are actively seeking other work, where state support is appropriate but some people clearly make lifestyle choices to be reliant on the state (and that means use either money paid by others in taxes or borrowed with the cost passed on to future taxpayers) rather than support themselves and their families.
Theft still isn't moral just because you use the state to extract money from the fruits of other people's labour rather than just steal it directly.
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No it won't be....you can run the figures yourselves, like I have done previously. The goverment will still need to pay out for most of the stuff it does already and pay UBI as well. With the end result likely more than doubling total goverment expenditure. So there would need to be some significant changes elsewhere that them of course themselves have some very significant and undesirable affects.
Schodedingers nonsence where proponents of UBI claim it will simultaneously allow fewer people to participate in the economy and more of them on a part time basis but yet economic output will 'shoot up'
Doesn't really matter that much when the UBI payments alone would cost more than current total goverment expenditure.
And you'll still need means testing 'red tape and admin' because some people (disabled thoose with lots kids etc) already get paid more from the state than they would from UBI and so we will still need other 'benefits'
QED for the Schodedingers point. Fewer people working yet more overall productivity...
It's just nonsensical fantasy
More of the same .....
Again we are supposed to believe that people will be so well off from UBI (funded how?) that they will all be be able to be super picky about what work they do do, if any, but yet economic output will 'shoot up'!
It's socialist lysenko esque denial of observable reality. Total wish thinking nonsence.
If humans really can be replaced by machines in most of the economy then the far more likely scenarious are the elimination or marginalisation of most humans to a life of poverty rather than the fantastical 'luxury communism' of lives of leisure the proponents of UBI claim will materialise!
And even if we assume that UBI can be financially viable somehow the suggestion that the populace will embrace lives of self improvement and good grace is rather naive when human observable human nature shows that many would instead embrace a hedonistic, volatile, feckless and increasingly violent lifestyle of substance abuse and despair at lack of any purpose tontheir lives.
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There is a lot of bloat in both the private and public sector. I would like to see more support for smaller companies and decentralised government. When people see the benefits of their work first hand they are more likely to have a stronger work ethic.
It's also concerning that outside of work a lot of entertainment being consumed is owned by Chinese companies (Bytedance, Tencent) and sports organisations being snapped up by petro money. The framework of the western world is being bought up and the population is sleep walking into a life of gluttony and sloth-like behaviour.
Caporegime
Try Sweden... Makes UK look like slavery.
Because as a society having a large middle class and smaller disparity in wealth is generally better for almost everyone. Lower crime, better education, more opportunites, more people with disposable income means more growth. If nobody but the very few has any money, then capitalism doesn't work.
Look at the US in the golden era after WW2.
With automation, AI etc. we should all be looking at reducing the amount of work we have to do. Forcing people to work for barely subsistence level wages when it can be automated just seems pointlessly cruel and only beneficial to the very few.
Obviously UBI alone won't work, it would have to be done in conjuction with a complete restructuring of taxation.
P.S. I'm definitely not work shy, even during furlough I did charity work and would 100% continue to work with a UBI; although it would be nice to not need to in order to survive.
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Nothing you have just typed in incompatible with the premise that 'poor' people should not just be given money.
The golden era of the US didn't occur because 'poor' people we being given money by the rich but rather because of an economic boom that benefitted many, including more 'working class' type roles.
You have maybe unwittingly highlighted the issue and the clash of ideologies at play here. One (incorrectly) says that poverty can be eliminated by taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. The other ideology understands that the only way to build actual economic wealth is to have a as much of the workforce engaged in useful work and being appropriately renumerated for it. A country can't 'tax' itself to wealth unless its tax base is mostly based on a fluke of natural resources (i.e. Norway and the gulf state with oil) and even then many resource rich states still manage to screw that up because of who ends up in charge.
With an increasingly service leas economy the amount of potential work goes up not down as the amount of work that can be undertaken for such roles can be practically almost un ending. If the reply is that machines can do all the work why would those in charge of the machines just want to give their products away to strangers for nothing for the remainder of human existence? That's never been the way the world works.
At best the humans or AI at the top would see humans as an annoyance and at worst a now useless parasite to be eliminated.
After all the actual real world evidence suggests that 'liberated' from the need to work a reasonable amount of our time that many people do not become enlightened life learning people who take up the arts' and care for their fellow humans but rather often descend into feckless lives of substance abuse, violence and despair.
The 'pointless' bit becomes the people if the work can be automated for less cost from an economic standpoint
Paid by whom? Again why are the humans or AI going to submit to this giveaway? Why would they? What's their incentive? At best they will shut themselves away in their own private fiefdom's and hoard resources. Because even if work can be automated their is still only a finite amount of some critical resources on earth! Why would an AI or the humans elites want to squander this on the masses?
I suppose we best do what we can to get mining/ resource extraction rocking in space if we want to stave off this otherwise likely scenario
That may be true but look what the welfare state has done to brits 150 years ago men used to que up outside the docks just for the chance to work so their family didn't go hungry. Some of their decedent's now go through life doing little if any paid work, living a life on welfare despite having the ability to work.
It's one of those intractable human problems. Namely that many humans need work and even some eternally struggles and challenges to bring meaning to their life.
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Soldato
I think it would be better if it was just enough to cover part of a standard mortgage in your area and then your utilities.
I never said poor people should just be given money. That's the current system, btw. Poor people, many of whom work are given money out of taxes that we pay. UBI would mean everyone gets given a base amount.
It happened because jobs paid a living wage. A single earner could buy a home, support a partner and children, buy a car, go on holiday etc. That is no longer the case for many, many people.
If corporations aren't willing or able to pay a decent wage any more then there will be barely any consumers.
Yes, useful work; work that can be automated is not useful. And the renumeration for much of that work is not appropriate given living costs.
Because if they don't "give a portion away" through taxation they create the issue I've been talking about where they no longer have any customers, because very few people have any disposable income.
What's the point of making a new iPhone if only 0.1% of the population can afford it?
In turn if there's no point in researching and developing new products, manufacturing them, shipping them etc. you further reduce the need for jobs.
You understand that having to queue up to work so that people don't starve when there's actually plenty for all is a bad thing, right?
I'd much rather some people don't work at all if it means a much better quality of life for most people.
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See this is what I don't understand, either.
If you (tech billionaire) have all the resources, and fully automated labour, where is the incentive to produce anything beyond what you want for yourself? And maybe your small circle of friends/sycophants.
People talk about everybody being freed from work, and at the same time having everything they need. AI/automation providing it for everyone. Sadly, I don't see why the people who own the resources, and the automated labour, will care about the vast majority who would just be drains on their resources.
I consider it just as likely if not more likely, that those people would, at best, separate themselves from the rest of us whilst jealously guarding their resources. At worst, they might actively try to genocide the rest of us (by whatever means, active eradication or denial of the means to feed ourselves, etc).
I don't believe that human nature being what it is, that we will ever reach the utopia of everybody being given what they need/want. It's never happened in human history and I don't believe it will ever happen. We just aren't wired that way. The powerful, the rich and the greedy will not allow it. Or at least, not without a fight.
If you have fully automated labour and you have all the resources and raw materials, you don't care about producing a new iPhone in the first place. You no longer need money, nor human labour, nor care about your human workers (you don't have any) or their families, or whether they live or die.
You build a *** great big wall (or your automated labourers do), put guns everywhere pointing outwards, and say "I'm good, thanks. Sucks to be you."
An if it really was enough to be a basic income (I.e enough to live on in a developed country) the mounts needed to be raised via taxation or borrowing become ludicrous even before all the other adverse affects hit home.
the idea that it's greedy corporations that are consciously not paying a 'living wage' isn't very well founded in reality. Companies react to the environment they find themselves in. One of the main reasons the US had such a 'golden age' 70 odd years ago was that globalisation hadn't yet kicked into overdrive.
The profit margins of many companies (say for example supermarkets) simply don't allow for large increased to be paid out to all workers without increasing proces to consumers thereby contributing to an inflation cycle that leads few people better off.
The real question is why would you make the new iPhone (for the masses) at all if you have total or near industrial automation, in a resource constrained environment?
People not working doesn't tend to lead to a better quality of life for everyone though. Go look at the problem families couples and individuals in the UK.
The ones that makes others loves misery with anti social/ criminal behaviour. A common factor is no adult working in the household.
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Soldato
Are you suggesting differing amounts dependant on location?
Who would decide where the boundaries are and what would happen to people getting a lot less simply due to some arbitrary line and being on the wrong side by a small distance?
Soldato
Yes, the boundaries could be house prices and a percentage. If we were to get 1,600 a month I'm moving up north ASAP!
Soldato
Exactly the issue - How do you define location? Does the person already have to be living there? From there for X years or have family there?
Can you just hitch hike to a different town and rock up to the dole office and get better money?
Soldato
Wouldnt be any different to how rents and council tax are calculated lol.
I don't see how it won't be dystopia.
What's that film where everyone lives on earth in poverty and the elite live on this orbiting utopia?
That's what it would be like.
Humans have always exploited others. The top are trying to pay the lowers the least they can. We've gotten past slavery. But there are still so many disadvantaged, the nhs for example is dying.
Money is still be funneled to the rich at the expense of the poor.
This UBI dream would put so much pressure on the rich it wouldn't be worth doing those high paid jobs.
Its a gargantuan amount to tax the well off.
I haven't seen the maths of how this is feasible.
1600 a month per person is just not affordable the tax on high paid jobs would be insane and make them not worth doing.
So UBI is the utopis answer to AI, but following the dystopia track..
Let's take an extreme view. AI destroys 99.99pc of jobs over time. A few people/corps own this AI revolution. UBI isn't viable.
As jobs drop off, the richer would get richer faster. More and more people would only be kept alive through "charity" .
But why give this charity (UBI) at all? Why not just horde resources and live a life of luxury?
Why fund all these useless, resource consuming humans?
After all, if no one has a job, and no money, there's no need to make anything. We go back to resources being everything.
Humans are now inefficient at extracting and processing these resources vs AI/robotics. Why do we (the elite) need them?.. Wait.. We don't.
It takes a majority to be kind for a utopia. It only takes a few selfish, greedy, dictators to create a dystopia.
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Additionally, we know that there aren't nearly enough resources for everyone to live a Western lifestyle. This would consume many Earth's worth of resources.
So when no human needs to do any labouring, and nobody can any more "justify" that some countries should have more than others... it's going to get messy, isn't it. When everyone in BRICS countries wants a big TV and the latest phone..
At some point, the elite will just view the countless hordes of humanity as nothing other than a threat. A threat to their ownership of the resources, and certainly a drain on those resources. It is logical for those people to prefer for that threat, and that drain, to be removed.
So when no human needs to do any labouring, and nobody can any more "justify" that some countries should have more than others... it's going to get messy, isn't it. When everyone in BRICS countries wants a big TV and the latest phone..
At some point, the elite will just view the countless hordes of humanity as nothing other than a threat. A threat to their ownership of the resources, and certainly a drain on those resources. It is logical for those people to prefer for that threat, and that drain, to be removed.