Universal Basic Income thread

[pErvinalia]

So not only are market prices always correct, they are now also the very definition of fair?

There is no "correct." So, no, market prices are not always correct. They are never "correct," but neither are prices set by fiat or majority vote "correct" (much less "always" correct).

And, they are certainly at least as "fair" as prices arbitrarily set by fiat, rather than in accordance with an arms-length transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller? Unless there is some information that some government body or individual third parties have that the folks engaged in the transaction don't have, I think you'd be hard pressed to explain how you think the government/outside third party declaration of a wage is more fair than the price set by the persons involved

This goes back to the debate about "rational self interest". Individuals often aren't a good judge of what is in their best interests, particularly in the long run. If the aim is to give the maximum benefit to the most people, then some rational intervention at a society-wide scale is sometimes necessary.

[NineBerry]

People who become Math teachers because it makes more money, are bad Math teachers.

[rainbow]

I think you'd be hard pressed to explain how you think the government/outside third party declaration of a wage is more fair than the price set by the persons involved

Then you don't think too hard.

I'm an employer, and when it comes around to wage negotiations, I decide what the increase will be. The only option my employees have is to join the queue of the unemployed, if they don't like it.

Not really an option for them, so how is this fair?

BTW. I pay way above the minimum wage just because I'm nice.

[Scot Dutchy]

I wonder what this has to do with the Universal Basic Income?

We are talking about the future when technology reduces employment positions. The idea of UBI is to create a base on which people only have to work a few hours to attain a liveable income. As our population increases there will be less work to do in many sectors. GDP is not falling because output is maintained through technology. This is going to be fact that everyone will have to face up to. Attitude to the work ethic will have to change. Companies trying to maintain the status quo will become dinosaurs and be overtaken by slim efficient ones using technology to do the work. That is the prospect and it is up to countries to adapt or remain in the victorian age.

[Brian Peacock]

But it's the first step to a classless moneyless society comrade!

[Scot Dutchy]

But it's the first step to a classless moneyless society comrade!

Come and join us.

[Forty Two]

Indeed, the Dutch have no class.

[Scot Dutchy]

Indeed, the Dutch have no class.

No we dont. Especially the sort you are describing.

[Forty Two]

The Dutch are like school in summertime.

[Scot Dutchy]

His system will work fine. There is nothing mandating that employment is necessary. It's just not a fully universal income. I think that's fine, as long as the calculation was done post hoc at tax time, but it would be better for social harmony if it was fully universal with no strings attached.

His makes a big assumption that there will be permanent work which will be the first thing to disappear. The agencies would look after the tax. The non-permanent feature will give greater freedom. You could plan when you wanted to work and for how long. You would plan it like a holiday but it would be called workdays.

[pErvinalia]

He didn't say anything about permanent work.

[Forty Two]

The thing is, why are we to assume that, say, having enough money to cover your rent will incline people to 'sit around and drink all day'. Employment doesn't act as a moral corrective ensuring a sober and active population, and why does being employed make sitting around and drinking all night acceptable by implication? You seem to have a rather limited view of what motivates people.

Well, on this point, it's not so much the sitting around and drinking all day part that is what is encouraged. It's the incentive to forego opportunities. If you are not given an income, and have to make rent, and if you don't make rent you'll eventually be evicted, then you have a massive incentive to accept a paying opportunity, one that allows you to pay rent, even if the opportunity is unattractive. It's the incentive that has had men accepting dangerous and distasteful jobs for as long as there have been jobs. When it's on you to provide, you do what you have to do. If, however, you don't have that incentive, then you're likely to forego other opportunities which are distasteful.

So, any theory of a minimum basic income must take that into account.

[Forty Two]

If things are unpalatable, dangerous and unpleasant, pay the people who are willing to do them real big money. Or use machines.

Well, the difficulty here is basic economics, as a free market will not price products and services in accordance with the pleasantness of the work needed to produce them. Often, the less dangerous and less distasteful jobs pay more, like how acting can pay insanely high incomes, and garbage collecting not so much.

One answer is to set the salaries outside of the free market, so that this unfairness is resolved. However, that inevitably leads to distortions in the market and has massive ill effects across the economy, i.e. in the long run, it hurts a lot of people to do that. And, if you take away that portion of a free society, it becomes very difficult to maintain any sort of individual autonomy and liberty. It places in the hands of the state nearly 100% control over individual lives.

[Scot Dutchy]

He didn't say anything about permanent work.

If you quoting levels of salaries you are not moving away from the present system where the idea of permanent work is considered the ideal. I am talking about a completely different approach.

[Forty Two]

I've never heard anyone on the left support it (as cheap labour).

Definitely not on that express basis, no, but they do support it, and the economic effect of bringing in more unskilled labor into an economy is, necessarily, to drive the cost of that labor down. That's supply and demand, econ 101. If you have a type of job that has a need for 10,000 workers, and you have 9,000 workers available to fill those jobs, the wage goes up (in a competitive market). If you add 2,000 more workers available, the wage for that job will tend to be pushed down. If you add 2,000 more immigrants coming in who also can fill that job, then that's a further downward pressure on wages.

The left doesn't want the low wages, I admit. But their answer is to have the State command wages to be higher, and to try to push the river upstream. Some on the left advocate destroying the free market anyway, because they simply oppose free market capitalism and see it as an unfair evil to be defeated. That more extreme leftist advocates price controls, wage controls, and government central planning of the economy to determine what products and services are needed, what resources, including workers, are needed to accomplish those goals, etc.