Ask Lemmy

My opinion is that our politicians would prefer fascism.

Of all the capitalists bitching about higher taxes and how UBI will destroy businesses, they keep forgetting that people are more willing to buy shit when they don't have to worry about rent.

Yes, I support it. Science has shown the government can afford it and it will save them money in the long run. If society has the resources to ensure everyone's basic needs are met, do it.

The argument against it is that people won't work if they aren't forced to. I think people want to work. This would enable people to have their basic needs met first so they can build a career comfortably.

I believe it should happen and I believe it eventually will happen in Canada, but it will take a lot longer than it should.

It's necessary for the next step in human society in a post scarcity world

I strongly think we should have it. The money isn't trickling down, so we need to forcibly re-distribute it.

As a step inbetween industrialization and automatization, i think it's neccessary sometime. But that means also a step from capaitalism to whatever we have then, so even that step will not be easy.

My strong opinion is that anyone born into a progressive society is entitled to food, clothing and shelter. The bare minimum you need to survive. There are too many holes in the middle of most towns and cities nowadays with the "Corporation Corners" on the outskirts sucking up all the money that used to flow inward.

It's a good concept in terms of having a social safety net and meeting basic needs. But if we keep everything else the same and just start giving everyone $5000 checks, then the rent and essentials will just magically go up in price to where it's basically the same as it was before.

im FOR IT

it would allow me to try earning money or study without worrying about being punished for failing

Free healthcare for all before we even think about UBI.

I support it and think it could work. It would make people more happy and free, while removing a lot of unnecessary and expensive bureaucracy from our current welfare system.

We should not have UBI as that implicitly continues the need for money. Instead we should work towards a world with Universal Basic Resources, or even not so basic resources, if it can be automated.

Conceptually I'm 100% for it. In reality I'm sure theres going to be unintended consequences that im not seeing.

If it can be made to work like it sounds like it should, we need it and we need it bad.

I like negative income tax better. Basically you declare an amount that is the basic amount someone can live on, I.e. £20k and if you earn less than that your income is topped up by other tax payers. This has the advantage of high tax payers not being given a payment every month that they don't need.

The downside of it is that means testing still requires some amount of beaurocracy. That means you'd be unable to completely axe the department of work and pensions (DWP) for example here in the UK. My understanding is that you could do universal basic income and pay everyone in the UK £1000 per month and those costs would be totally offset by no longer having to finance the DWP so it's a budget neutral policy in terms of government spending.

I'm fine with it but feel it needs to slowly decrease as income goes up. To be clear this cannot have cut off cliffs and should err on the side of recipient. Bit there is no reason to give it to anyone with high income.

If you give it to us, we'll invest it which will fuck with the market or spend it on luxury goods. This all cause inflation that would negate the benefits.

Anyone who really needs it and is spending it all within some reasonable time doesn't have this inflation effect.

Same way people on food stamps don't cause the price of food to go up because they're not using it for excessive spending.

I understand part of the goal is no bureaucracy so I suggest it be part of the tax system. Everyone get it's but it's taxed away for high income earners in a way that is not tax avoidable.

I could also see it being added to the us tax system by simply expanding the child tax credit to include adults. That already has limits built in but that's a lump sum on a tax return so not an ideal distribution.

Progressive taxation rate that can go negative (aka people can receive money) is more fair.

Could even be easier to implement because it is not only a "social" benefit that cost tax payers money. That could help convince some people.

I think that focusing everything on UBI and dismantling all other forms of welfare are going to create massive inequalities in society that few people anticipate.

For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if there are effectively UBI free zones in some major metros with decent economies.

Once AI doesn't pan out as the savior of the planet, they'll pivot to go all in on robotics, and lots of people are going to lose jobs. When there's a permanent unemployment rate of 30% or more, society will be faced with 2 choices - UBI, or a reduction in the population.

Which solution do you think each party will embrace?

Yes. I'm opposed.

Simply saying "everyone should get enough money from the government to live" has a lot of problems. The most obvious being that cost of living varies substantially from one place to another. And peoples needs vary substantially as well. So where do we set the number?

You'll also need to figure out how to combat the massive inflationary effects that would occur.

But imo, the biggest issue is what happens in the long term. Say a nation gives its citizens a UBI. Now wait 100 years. What happens? Well what happens is that, assuming this doesn't collapse the economy some other way, and assuming this is a democratic nation, everyone will start taking UBI for granted, and will start thinking "you know, if only I had a little more free money, I could afford that nice shirt I saw my neighbor wearing yesterday...". And because "free money for everyone" will be a popular political platform, the UBI amount will go up and up and up, with little thought put into how to continue funding it. The government accrues more and more debt over time funding the program, until finally the government can no longer continue paying its debtors, and the country collapses into chaos.

Instead, I'm in favor of a citizen's dividend, which is tied to the nation's economic output. A good example is how Alaskans get a dividend, since they agreed to allow private companies to extract the oil from their state. Land value taxes could work like this. Carbon taxes could work like this. If you want to make sure everyone is fed and housed, then that is a very noble goal - but it should be accomplished by providing people with food and housing. And I think it is right and fair that the people of a nation should be compensated for the use of their land and the negative externalities they endure - but how much they are paid out should not be coupled to the cost of living. It should be well known to be an independent, unpredictable, and highly variable amount that they can't rely on, so that they never gain the expectation that they will always have endless free money to spend however they please.