Universal Basic Income

Lamb

God's Lil Lamb
Community Team
Administrator
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2015
Messages
31,560
Age
57
Gender
Female
Religious Affiliation
Lutheran
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
California will be the first to try out the concept of paying 100 residents $500 a month with no strings attached. It's called Universal Basic Income.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...esidents-in-experimental-welfare-program.html
Luckily, the experimental program won’t deplete the city’s coffers as it benefits from financial backing by wealthy Silicon Valley moguls. One of those backers is Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, whose the Economic Security Project contributed $1 million to the project.
 

NewCreation435

Well-known member
Valued Contributor
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
4,914
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Christian
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
Seems like this is just teaching people to be lazy and expect hand outs to me. There are plenty of jobs right now if you want to work
 

psalms 91

Well-known member
Moderator
Valued Contributor
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
15,205
Age
75
Location
Pa
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Charismatic
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
Or helps people make ends meet, I would love an extra 500 a month as I am on a fixed income and a little old to work, I am 69 and have a bad hip, feet that may also need an operation and diabetes so not really in shape to work.
 

Arsenios

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2018
Messages
3,577
Location
Pacific North West
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Eastern Orthodox
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Single
Mankind needs labors...

The Curse of God is the Blessing for man...

Gen 3:19
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou art,
and unto dust
shalt thou return.




Live a life without labors and you will NEED drugs...

$500 will give joy for a night or two to a drug addict...

Then back to stealing...

100 persons x $500/mo = $50,000 a month x 20 months = $1 Million...

Follow the personal stories of Lotto winners...

A study in bad outcomes...

Blessings are the curse...

Curses are the Blessings...

California is turning into a human cesspool...

Arsenios
 

Lamb

God's Lil Lamb
Community Team
Administrator
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2015
Messages
31,560
Age
57
Gender
Female
Religious Affiliation
Lutheran
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
In an article on another news site I read that they're comparing this somehow to the money that Alaskan residents receive from the pipeline revenue. That money helps them through the winters, saving for college tuitions, etc...

What Bill said brought up a good point in that there are people who can't just get out and get a job to supplement their income and this would benefit them. But I think the program was meant to give people more of an opportunity to better themselves with the money, not relying on receiving it monthly but having a chance to do something. Whether that something is paying for schooling that could get them a better job someday or help them while maybe the breadwinner is down on his luck at the moment. I can see a benefit and yet we see from history that people become complacent and begin to rely on the handout and keep expecting it to be given to them. :(
 

psalms 91

Well-known member
Moderator
Valued Contributor
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
15,205
Age
75
Location
Pa
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Charismatic
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
In an article on another news site I read that they're comparing this somehow to the money that Alaskan residents receive from the pipeline revenue. That money helps them through the winters, saving for college tuitions, etc...

What Bill said brought up a good point in that there are people who can't just get out and get a job to supplement their income and this would benefit them. But I think the program was meant to give people more of an opportunity to better themselves with the money, not relying on receiving it monthly but having a chance to do something. Whether that something is paying for schooling that could get them a better job someday or help them while maybe the breadwinner is down on his luck at the moment. I can see a benefit and yet we see from history that people become complacent and begin to rely on the handout and keep expecting it to be given to them. :(
As one who runs a program that jelps low income I can attest to the fact that some are very grateful for the help and others do see it as an entitlemment so I have seen both sides but at least my view is that it is there to help people and it is not up to me to judge so when someone complains about what we have or not have I gently remind them that it is a blessing no matter what is given and we are not short of things usually so there is no real reason to complain.
 

Ruth

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
4,631
Age
66
Location
Midwest
Gender
Female
Religious Affiliation
Unitarian
Political Affiliation
Moderate
Marital Status
Single
Or helps people make ends meet, I would love an extra 500 a month as I am on a fixed income and a little old to work, I am 69 and have a bad hip, feet that may also need an operation and diabetes so not really in shape to work.
I agree Bill!
 

tango

... and you shall live ...
Valued Contributor
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
14,083
Location
Realms of chaos
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
As with so much else the devil is in the detail.

A pilot scheme giving 100 people $500/month means $50,000/month total or $600,000 in a year. In budgets at state level that kind of money and more is lost in rounding errors. The trouble comes when you try and make that so-called universal basic income, you know, universal. If you're talking about making it universal across the country then now you've got about 300,000,000 people so giving them $500/month each means you need to find $150,000,000,000 every month (that's $150bn for those who don't feel like counting zeros). That means every year you need $1.8trn to fund it. Where is that kind of money going to come from? Don't think you can just be taxing the rich because the people at the top will soon find ways to avoid paying the new tax, so the idea is going to do little more than crush the middle classes for the sake of handing out free money.

Over time the chances are it won't help as much as it might seem at first anyway. Some people will use the money to fund something useful - whether it be some form of education or training, maybe being able to buy and run a car so they can work further afield or whatever. Others will simply figure it's some free beer money. In any event throwing money around usually doesn't help the people it purports to help because, as money devalues, so prices rise and soak up any benefit. If by some government edict every dollar became notionally worth $10 there might be a flurry of activity as people sought to cash in their money for ten times face value but it would be a very short time before the price of everything increased to soak it up.
 

MoreCoffee

Well-known member
Valued Contributor
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
19,114
Location
Western Australia
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Catholic
Political Affiliation
Moderate
Marital Status
Single
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
The idea behind a universal basic income is to make a living wage available to everybody regardless of their status as working or not. The reason for creating it is both to benefit people who are unable to work as well as people who do work but have low wages. But because it is universal everybody gets it. People who do work and have a decent income will probably pay more than the UBI amount in taxes so the net effect will be a tax cut for them. People on pensions and the like would have their pension replaced with UBI. The unemployed and unemployable would receive UBI. If your industry is automated (robots take your job) then you'd get the UBI to feed yourself while you retrain.

People are getting worried about self-driving cars and trucks and trains and boats ending all transportation industry jobs they are also worried about diagnostic AI ending many medical industry jobs and the same goes for computer industry jobs. The truth is that nearly every industry that currently exists may be AI and robot 'employment' only in the future. So the taxes would come from taxes levied against the 'income' produced by robots and AI with people receiving UBI from those taxes.

Time will tell if any of this comes into normal day to day experience within our lifetime.
 

tango

... and you shall live ...
Valued Contributor
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
14,083
Location
Realms of chaos
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
The idea behind a universal basic income is to make a living wage available to everybody regardless of their status as working or not. The reason for creating it is both to benefit people who are unable to work as well as people who do work but have low wages. But because it is universal everybody gets it. People who do work and have a decent income will probably pay more than the UBI amount in taxes so the net effect will be a tax cut for them. People on pensions and the like would have their pension replaced with UBI. The unemployed and unemployable would receive UBI. If your industry is automated (robots take your job) then you'd get the UBI to feed yourself while you retrain.

People are getting worried about self-driving cars and trucks and trains and boats ending all transportation industry jobs they are also worried about diagnostic AI ending many medical industry jobs and the same goes for computer industry jobs. The truth is that nearly every industry that currently exists may be AI and robot 'employment' only in the future. So the taxes would come from taxes levied against the 'income' produced by robots and AI with people receiving UBI from those taxes.

Time will tell if any of this comes into normal day to day experience within our lifetime.

I'm aware of what the idea is. The trouble is whether it would work or not. I don't doubt it would be a lovely thought to have lots of people given a living wage regardless of whether they do anything useful or not. I wouldn't say no to some free money for not doing anything. I can't imagine many people would be opposed to it.

The part of your post I bolded is something I guess you got mixed up. If people pay more in tax than their UBI it works out as a tax increase, not a tax cut.

How do you think you're going to levy taxes on the income produced by robots? A robot doesn't have a tax domicile and we've already seen how multinationals can pretty much choose where they want to be based and how much tax they would like to pay. Unless anyone thinks like companies set to make untold billions from replacing human labor with robots are suddenly going to become very charitable and not do everything in their power to avoid taxes we'd better come up with a good way to figure out how to pay a 13-figure annual bill and even a figure as low as $1,800,000,000,000 each and every year is only giving people $500/month. I don't know about you but I can't live on $500/month. Make it $2,000/month (still probably not enough for people with mortgages, student loans, car payments etc) and you just boosted the bill to $7,200,000,000,000 every year. That should do wonders for the national debt.

You could always make it work like the UK's income support, where you're allowed to earn some token amount before everything you earn is deducted, pound for pound, from your income support. Never underestimate the ability of government to create powerful disincentives to do anything useful.
 

psalms 91

Well-known member
Moderator
Valued Contributor
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
15,205
Age
75
Location
Pa
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Charismatic
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
I'm aware of what the idea is. The trouble is whether it would work or not. I don't doubt it would be a lovely thought to have lots of people given a living wage regardless of whether they do anything useful or not. I wouldn't say no to some free money for not doing anything. I can't imagine many people would be opposed to it.

The part of your post I bolded is something I guess you got mixed up. If people pay more in tax than their UBI it works out as a tax increase, not a tax cut.

How do you think you're going to levy taxes on the income produced by robots? A robot doesn't have a tax domicile and we've already seen how multinationals can pretty much choose where they want to be based and how much tax they would like to pay. Unless anyone thinks like companies set to make untold billions from replacing human labor with robots are suddenly going to become very charitable and not do everything in their power to avoid taxes we'd better come up with a good way to figure out how to pay a 13-figure annual bill and even a figure as low as $1,800,000,000,000 each and every year is only giving people $500/month. I don't know about you but I can't live on $500/month. Make it $2,000/month (still probably not enough for people with mortgages, student loans, car payments etc) and you just boosted the bill to $7,200,000,000,000 every year. That should do wonders for the national debt.

You could always make it work like the UK's income support, where you're allowed to earn some token amount before everything you earn is deducted, pound for pound, from your income support. Never underestimate the ability of government to create powerful disincentives to do anything useful.
Actually welfare is set up that way so is social security and the disability pension I get is as well. If I would earn anything it would be deducted dollar for dollar from my check. They even do that with my social security. My disability is about 200 a month more than I can get in social security and rather than get two checks I just dont apply for the social security. I agree that they should allow people to work or earn income at some level rather than doing the dollar for dollar thing. You are right that it does kill incentive for sure. Thgere should be a happy medium where if someone is on welfare or a pension that they be allowed to earn so much before that kicks in or in the case of welfare that they would continue with that till a person would get on their feet with a job rather than just cutting them off right away
 

tango

... and you shall live ...
Valued Contributor
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
14,083
Location
Realms of chaos
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
Actually welfare is set up that way so is social security and the disability pension I get is as well. If I would earn anything it would be deducted dollar for dollar from my check. They even do that with my social security. My disability is about 200 a month more than I can get in social security and rather than get two checks I just dont apply for the social security. I agree that they should allow people to work or earn income at some level rather than doing the dollar for dollar thing. You are right that it does kill incentive for sure. Thgere should be a happy medium where if someone is on welfare or a pension that they be allowed to earn so much before that kicks in or in the case of welfare that they would continue with that till a person would get on their feet with a job rather than just cutting them off right away

It would make sense that earnings are deducted fractionally up to a certain point, then welfare is cut off.

For the sake of figures if your welfare is $1000/month perhaps anything you made could be deducted 50c in the dollar, so that if you worked and made $1200 you'd lose $600 of your welfare. Then by the time you were earning $2000/month your welfare would have dropped to zero.

The trouble with the current system is that it encourages a combination of dependency and dishonesty. There's no point working if you're not going to benefit from it, and if you can work for cash in hand there's a strong disincentive to be honest about it. In the meantime the taxpayer gets to pick up the tab, again.
 

psalms 91

Well-known member
Moderator
Valued Contributor
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
15,205
Age
75
Location
Pa
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Charismatic
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
It would make sense that earnings are deducted fractionally up to a certain point, then welfare is cut off.

For the sake of figures if your welfare is $1000/month perhaps anything you made could be deducted 50c in the dollar, so that if you worked and made $1200 you'd lose $600 of your welfare. Then by the time you were earning $2000/month your welfare would have dropped to zero.

The trouble with the current system is that it encourages a combination of dependency and dishonesty. There's no point working if you're not going to benefit from it, and if you can work for cash in hand there's a strong disincentive to be honest about it. In the meantime the taxpayer gets to pick up the tab, again.
This makes sense, to bad the government doesnt operate on sense
 

tango

... and you shall live ...
Valued Contributor
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
14,083
Location
Realms of chaos
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
This makes sense, to bad the government doesnt operate on sense

If you start from the assumption that welfare is about helping people into work nothing makes sense. If you start from the assumption that welfare is a way to keep people dependent and little more than a vote-buying scheme it makes a lot more sense. I struggle to conclude anything other than that welfare is more about buying votes by keeping people afraid that the other side will take away the free money, than about actually helping.
 

ImaginaryDay2

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 11, 2015
Messages
3,967
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Lutheran
Political Affiliation
Moderate
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
What I wonder is why the phrase "no strings attached" has to be applied to the project. What if there were strings? We don't become better as a society by giving free money and saying "have a nice day!" We become better by meeting need. Financial security is a need, for sure, but so are many other things that might go along with finances (budgeting, child care, bills, grocery shopping...). Some might not know how to do these things (I did say some, not all), and would benefit from case management to assess that. Left to our own devices, what's really being solved if these other needs are still present? Stockton, California isn't the first place I think of when someone mentions fiscal security. The report mentioned that most are living well below the median income level.
Language is so powerful, and paints a picture that looks good (No strings attached!!! No-one looking over your shoulder!!!), but why do we frame it that way? I fail to see the issue with asking "where is your greatest need, and how can we assist you to meet that need?"
 

tango

... and you shall live ...
Valued Contributor
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
14,083
Location
Realms of chaos
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Christian
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
What I wonder is why the phrase "no strings attached" has to be applied to the project. What if there were strings? We don't become better as a society by giving free money and saying "have a nice day!" We become better by meeting need. Financial security is a need, for sure, but so are many other things that might go along with finances (budgeting, child care, bills, grocery shopping...). Some might not know how to do these things (I did say some, not all), and would benefit from case management to assess that. Left to our own devices, what's really being solved if these other needs are still present? Stockton, California isn't the first place I think of when someone mentions fiscal security. The report mentioned that most are living well below the median income level.
Language is so powerful, and paints a picture that looks good (No strings attached!!! No-one looking over your shoulder!!!), but why do we frame it that way? I fail to see the issue with asking "where is your greatest need, and how can we assist you to meet that need?"

A few things here.

Firstly, by definition, 50% are below the median. It's the very definition of what the median is. It makes for shock headlines if you rely on people not knowing because "half of people have below average income" is the kind of thing that can be used to rouse up the rabble to insist that Something Must Be Done when the very definitions used mean that nothing will ever change. The mean is more prone to be skewed - if you're using mean income then Bill Gates walking into bar makes everybody a multimillionaire, on average. The mean moves sharply when he walks in, the median won't shift anywhere near as sharply.

Throwing money at problems is just what government does. It's about all government can do. It's all well and good teaching people how to budget but different people have different priorities. You might be saving up for a fancy sports car while I think a sports car is a waste of money because I'd rather travel the world. You might think that's a waste of money. Understanding basic household economics is the sort of thing that should be taught in schools rather than left until later when maybe some government program or another will help people address a lack of basic life skills.

Meeting needs is complex. I think of people I've known over the years. Like the elderly widow who lived alone, who didn't have a lot of money (sometimes barely enough to get by) but she was OK with that - her biggest problem was losing physical mobility and finding it harder to get around. Or the guy whose wife died who literally had more money than he knew what to do with (his wife had a huge life insurance policy he didn't know about until she died) but was desperately lonely. Or the couple who endlessly fought over money because she was prone to waste it in one area while he wasted it in another, while both blamed the other for their financial situation. There's not much that can be done for the first person because even if you got the things she needed delivered to her door that doesn't help with the fact she struggles to get out and socialize. The second person needed human company, something government programs are bad at dealing with. The third needed a combination of financial advice and marital counseling.

Case management sounds good in theory but would rapidly become just another money pit that failed to offer anything like value for money. One fundamental problem is that the people who use welfare as a safety net while they get themselves sorted out aren't the problem, and the people who use welfare as a lifestyle choice because it's easier to just game the system than go out and work will just continue to game the system. It's not even as if making sure people are trying to find work achieves much - I've known business owners despair at the appalling quality of candidates they have seen turn up for interviews, wasting everybody's time because they had to prove they were "looking for work" to get their free money. So they'd show up late, make no attempt to impress the interviewer and make it clear during the interview they had no interest in the job at all, but every letter that said "thank you for your time, however we regret to inform you..." counted as "proof" they were looking for work. In the meantime the people who are genuinely trying to find work have their time wasted by being expected to prove it, when they would rather stay busy job hunting.

ETA: It's actually quite hard to enforce giving away money with strings attached. You've probably seen the kind of person who gets to the checkout with a cart piled high with junk food and then pays with their food stamps. Even if you could enforce some kind of system whereby food stamps couldn't be used for junk food it's virtually impossible to stop someone buying things that are covered by their food stamps, selling them on for cash at a discount, then using the money to buy junk food. All it means is that someone who doesn't qualify for food stamps gets a benefit from food stamps and the person who does qualify gets a bit less junk food.
 

Tigger

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 20, 2015
Messages
1,555
Age
63
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Lutheran
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
Its definitely a complicated subject. On one hand IMO here in the U.S. I think Social security it too low for those folks who’ve paid in all their lives and others that are truly disabled. But then again I’ve lost count how many times I’ve heard of people younger and in better shape than me on SSI.
 

Tigger

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 20, 2015
Messages
1,555
Age
63
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Lutheran
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
Its definitely a complicated subject. On one hand IMO here in the U.S. I think Social security it too low for those folks who’ve paid in all their lives and others that are truly disabled. But then again I’ve lost count how many times I’ve heard of people younger and in better shape than me on SSI.
 

Lamb

God's Lil Lamb
Community Team
Administrator
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2015
Messages
31,560
Age
57
Gender
Female
Religious Affiliation
Lutheran
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
Yes
Its definitely a complicated subject. On one hand IMO here in the U.S. I think Social security it too low for those folks who’ve paid in all their lives and others that are truly disabled. But then again I’ve lost count how many times I’ve heard of people younger and in better shape than me on SSI.

Social Security definitely didn't turn out as most people anticipated :(
 

psalms 91

Well-known member
Moderator
Valued Contributor
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
15,205
Age
75
Location
Pa
Gender
Male
Religious Affiliation
Charismatic
Political Affiliation
Conservative
Marital Status
Married
Social Security definitely didn't turn out as most people anticipated :(
Mainly because congress has been robbing it since the 60's/ Now they want to blame the system for not having the money when it was congress who depleted the funds
 
Top Bottom