Universal Basic Income thread

[pErvinalia]

Your conservative world view perfectly reflects your conservatism.

[Brian Peacock]

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.

[rainbow]

eah, working out the cost/benefit would be a fairly monumental task. You've got direct costs and savings, but you've also got indirect ones (and intangible ones) like reduced health care costs due to less stress and likely more exercise, greater productivity per person-hour due to happier workers and less sick leave, better educated population (although, more expense to pay for that education), etc etc.

Increased health care costs because they just sit around and drink all day.
Less educated population because why bother with school when you can just drink
Less productivity per person-hour because of a resentful workforce

That is because your people are savages.
We in Africa don't think that way.

[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.

I think that is putting it the wrong way. Need is a valid motivation of people. If your life depends on doing something, you do it a bit quicker and more surely than if you can take it or leave it and not be significantly effected.

I think that in favor of the minimum basic income for all is that it will prevent the "need" to take unethical or illegal action in order to survive or feed one's kids.

Against it is the notion that if people's choices are things that are unpalatable, dangerous and unpleasant, vs. making do with the minimum, many people will take the minimum and not do unpalatable, dangerous or unpleasant things.

So, I think there are reasonable thoughts on both sides.

I like Hayek's rationale in favor of it.

[NineBerry]

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

[Tyrannical]

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

Exactly right.
Instead we see many leftist try to rationalize virtual slavery by supporting low wage earning immigrants to do those unpleasant jobs no one else wants to do.

I'm a well known racist, no argument against that here. But I'm a pick your own cotton racist, not a let's bring over the darkie slaves to do it for us cheaply.

[pErvinalia]

It's actually the right that supports them, as they enable offshoring within your own country.

[Tyrannical]

It's actually the right that supports them, as they enable offshoring within your own country.

Probably both the open immigration right and left support that. It's just more ironic when the left justify immigration by using cheap labor as a benefit.

[NineBerry]

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

Exactly right.
Instead we see many leftist try to rationalize virtual slavery by supporting low wage earning immigrants to do those unpleasant jobs no one else wants to do.

I'm a well known racist, no argument against that here. But I'm a pick your own cotton racist, not a let's bring over the darkie slaves to do it for us cheaply.

Somewhat conflicts with:

universal basic income but combined with universal basic work requirements. I don't think requiring all non retirees to work 20 hours a week is unreasonable.

[pErvinalia]

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

[Forty Two]

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

Certainly, as machines become more sophisticated, this argument gets better.

The trash collector, for example, in my town is still a person. In the coming years, it will become more and more feasible to automate trash collection. Some things, though, are still not possible to be done by machines.

There are limits, of course, to what can be paid -- for example, if coal minors were paid $1,000,000 a year, then the cost of power would become prohibitive. There are complex economics in play that make things difficult or impossible. If the cost of power goes up high or fast, people die. Measurably.

That's not to oppose a minimum basic income. I like the idea. But, I'd probably set it as a minimum for everyone, regardless of other income. Set a floor that everyone begins at. Don't take it away when a person starts earning money on their own. That was always the problem with welfare families in the US. They get enough to pay the bills, and so they are subjected to a financial disincentive to get a job. Why work for a small income, when you could get almost the same by not working. It's common sense. So, provide the basic minimum income, but let people work without losing it.

[Forty Two]

It's actually the right that supports them, as they enable offshoring within your own country.

Maybe in Oz, but here in the US, the "right" opposes open immigration, preferring to have an immigration policy that prefers skilled workers, professional employees, and high level folks, plus investors and traders. In the US, the left pushes for almost completely open immigration, suggesting that Americans won't do the dirty jobs that the unskilled, uneducated immigrants will do.

As a liberal, I am very pro-immigration, although I do oppose illegal immigration. The key point of debate for me is what should be legal and illegal. I think in the US there needs to be a complete overhaul and simplification of the system, and a better way for immigrants and visitors to be verified. Here in the States, it's very difficult for a police officer, for example, to know if an immigrant is legal or illegal. The paperwork may have an expiration date, but that expiration date may be ineffective because of an application pending which takes a long period of time. Plus local authorities don't have the power to enforce federal immigration law. And, there is an impossible communication gap -- local police can't get answers from the BCIS as to whether a person is legal or illegal, and the BCIS or ICE won't come and get them, even if they've been arrested. So, often nothing is done.

I think the US should be very open to immigration, but this isn't a charity program either. Yes, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses should come to the US - yearning to breathe free, not yearning for free government benefits. And, the illegals find out very quickly how to get government benefits.

[pErvinalia]

I really meant the capitalist class.

[Forty Two]

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

In the US they do. For example, Thomas Sowell, on the right, argues in response to the leftist, open borders arguers, that the argument made by the left that immigrants do the jobs Americans won't do -- Sowell argues that Americans have actually traditionally done exactly those jobs.

[pErvinalia]

Any articles from a lefty supporting cheap labour?