Hello, I’m not that informed about UBI, but here is my arguement:
Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices? Also, do you believe capatilism can co-exist with UBI?
not a 100% ubi fan, BUT, the times, they are a changing - and I firmly believe every robot deployed should have to offset ubi. every AI cycle should drive ubi funding.
Trained on the involuntary corpus of millions if not billions of people, it must benefit society overall otherwise we’re going to destroy everything.
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Abso-fucking-lutely.
Yes, with the caveat that it will need to be coupled with a massive pendulum swing in favor of workers rights.
That is completely automatic. The “right”/survivability to say no is directly empowering to entire labour force.
In all honesty it could help loosen regulations on workers rights. Flipping burgers and the boss is on some shady shit trying to schedule you a ton of hours? Fuck it. You can quit and still survive, and possibly thrive.
Not that I’d advocate loosening those regulations. Just that UBI itself could alleviate some current issues.
While I’d prefer to fully dismantle the whole capitalist system, I can accept UBI as the most realistic compromise we’re likely to get in our lifetimes.
I’d be happy to see our kids get it in their lifetime - I lost hope to see it myself with how backwards my country is
Sure, eliminate billionaires to pay for it
This is completely unrealistic.
A UBI of just $10,000 a year, and only to all working age Americans, would still cost several trillion dollars, every year.
Even if you could wave a magic wand and convert the combined net worth of all of the US’s billionaires to cash 1:1, that cash wouldn’t fund even that meager amount of UBI for more than a couple of years.
Sorry we don’t allow simple math in lemmy.
Here’s a good breakdown: https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/unboxing-universal-basic-income/
As for my thoughts, yes there would be a noticeable impact at first, but UBI would help stabilise and strengthen the economy in the long term because purchasing power and demand will increase. If supply can keep up, prices won’t go up. Companies can’t just raise prices as that’s called price fixing. Antitrust laws should be there to prevent that, but your mileage may vary depending on your country. That means that if some companies decide to raise prices because of more purchasing power, some smart company is going to charge less to gain more market share. So we’re still doing capitalism, but there’s a social safety net.
Also, people will still go to work to find purpose. Except “work” in this case could mean the freedom and flexibility to contribute locally, or take higher risks like entrepreneurship or becoming an artist.
That means that if some companies decide to raise prices because of more purchasing power, some smart company is going to charge less to gain more market share.
Here is how this turns out in reality: Company A raises prices because they are greedy bastards. Company B is then impressed with the sheer display of dominance by A and raises prices accordingly to “keep up”.
Your thinking is correct and that’s how it should work, maybe it even did in the 60s, but it just isn’t the case anymore.
Company A raises prices because they are greedy bastards. Company B is then impressed with the sheer display of dominance by A and raises prices accordingly to “keep up”.
When there’s a dozen manufacturers, they won’t all do it. As I mentioned, this is price fixing and illegal in a lot of countries.
Secondly, what’s stopping someone from creating another company to undercut all of those greedy bastards to corner the market?
When there’s a dozen manufacturers, they won’t all do it. As I mentioned, this is price fixing and illegal in a lot of countries.
They can’t coordinate together to fix prices, but there is nothing legally stopping them from watching each other’s public behavior and adjusting their pricing to match.
All B has to do is not raise their prices as much as A.
Ita already working like that post pandemic.
You’re forgetting “customers see how much prices are up, and just stay home” or “company C, looking to break in, undercuts A and B and changes the market.”
A real UBI is a great fix for capitalism, since it makes “f it, I’ll just stay at home” possible.
Your first example only works for goods that are completely optional, which is very rarely the case. For example, smartphones. Nobody technically needs one, but almost everyone in western countries has one. If every company that makes a smartphone increases their prices, people will still buy them because they basically need them. I believe this is the principle of inelastic demand (or low elasticity) – car fuel is a more traditional example.
Your second example doesn’t work when the cost of entry into the market is really high. This is very common in high tech. Take semiconductors for example. There’s basically one big name in chip manufacturing (TSMC) and a few runner-ups (Samsung, Intel, etc.). The latest node is infamous for being very expensive and low capacity. Why aren’t there new competitors constantly breaking in to the market?
UBI is a great idea and will help things, but it’s not perfect so we shouldn’t expect it to just completely fix capitalism. The best way to fix capitalism is to get governments (which are all in charge of capitalism) to fix it with regulations. UBI will be a major regulation/step in the right direction.
companies are gonna company.
and in this country, corporations are people.
capitalism loves to embrace extend extinguish so sure it’s temporarily compatible with e v e r y t h i n g
That’s the same logic opponents of raising the minimum wage use to justify their position
Yes… BUT I’d actually encourage people to consider an even better alternative, which is Universal Basic Services.
As you point out, giving people money is no guarantee that their spending power will be enough to cover their needs. I’ve heard it said that any UBI which is sufficient is unaffordable, and any that is affordable is insufficient. I think it’s still a policy we should experiment with, and I think even a small UBI could elevate poverty. But a more effective alternative is to try and provide essentials directly, free of cost.
What this looks like is publicly owned housing; a robust, fully-funded public education system that includes pre-K and higher ed; universal healthcare; and free food. Some of these – like housing and food – sound shocking and difficult, but to an earlier generation, so would the others. And we already have some of these programs for the very poor. The key to executing them is to bypass markets. Markets will always raise the cost of essentials because the demand is unlimited. Instead of paying private landlords for housing, the state or non-profit entities need to own the homes. There will still be costs associated with maintenance, but there need be no dividends or investor profits. Same with food. We might not be able to make everything in a grocery store free. But if you have well-run local gardens, they’ll actually produce a substantial amount of food that you can just put in baskets by the entrance and let people take from.
Unlike UBIs, which are inherently inflationary, UBS programs are deflationary. By offering free goods they create competition against market prices and make the stuff people still pay for (with a UBI) cheaper.
If you’d like to see how all of this works, go check out the tabletop RPG my friends developed at c/fullyautomatedrpg, or the world guide for the setting at https://fullyautomatedrpg.com/resources.
better alternative, which is Universal Basic Services.
Absolutely 100% worse. It creates an empire bureaucracy to distribute the subpar services under the same scarcity as subsidized housing today. 10 year+ wait in Toronto and other major cities, btw.
Cash means you can choose affordable housing that meets your needs, while balancing budget for food or other interests. Government cheese may not be as necessary to you compared to milk and eggs, or “better cheese”. Housing is especially corrupt and inadequate to subsidized distribution. You need to add income/asset conditionality on who can qualify even if almost everyone would like to get the discount. Its a great recipe to create ghetto neighbourhoods that a politician may wish to make worse in order to oppress the ghetto harder. You can’t escape the ghetto because you’ve got a cheap housing option. It makes other housing more expensive because “good neighbourhoods” have a premium when there are bad neighbourhoods.
UBS is everything that is wrong with our society, one step forward.
What this looks like is publicly owned housing; a robust, fully-funded public education system that includes pre-K and higher ed; universal healthcare
While universal healthcare is a proven cost saver, the other’s don’t need to be centralized/governmentalized. While the government/private sector can both build “soviet” style affordable housing, they can do so in a market system that provides affordable housing, while still providing a reasonable private profit margin, or government break even.
Education costs can be market based, when you give each family a stipend they can use for education. Only desperation would force you to send your child to a coal mine instead of school, but parents could choose to adequately feed their children and spend less on home school, with computers and online learning, then force a child that doesn’t want to be in school into a public institution. Baltimore/DC school districts spend $30k per pupil, largely to make a school to prison pipeline with excessive security needed to control kids who don’t want to be there.
UBI instead of UBS also means hope for young students who will be able to afford university if they are qualified, or otherwise afford surviving outside of a criminal gang support structure.
The issues that you’re pointing out are reasonable concerns, but I think you’re falling into a common mental pitfall that assumes that the implimentation must resemble the most similar past approach, while also decrying the irrationality of using those unsuccessful methods.
It doesn’t need to look like government cheese. It doesn’t need to look like “the projects”. All of those programs had systemic flaws that were specific, observable bad public policies.
Universal housing can look like the government acquiring existing apartments from disinterested landlords that are out of compliance and then granting them on a $1 lease in perpetuity to local neighborhood coops so long as they maintain it well. Universal food can look like mandates for grocery stores to provide non-profit collectives unfettered access to discarded items that are still perfectly edible instead of locking up dumpsters full of food that can feed people.
You can have a UBI too. I’m not shitting on the idea. But as you already pointed out, single payer healthcare is a great demonstration most people don’t even argue with. Implement a UBI, but where options exist for direct services, provide them and you won’t need nearly as large a UBI, and you can cut out tons of waste.
Free public transit is another great example. Do you want to have to include bus fare in the UBI? Or would it just make sense to make the buses and trains fare-free.
The university & school examples seem silly. Why give people a voucher instead of just reimbursing all accredited schools directly and let folks enroll anywhere without having to manage a budget? Just make them tuition free. Otherwise, you have to make a UBI large enough to pay all the administrators that exist just to process payments, and manage the size of vouchers… The UBI would go so much further if folks didn’t have to pay for things that don’t need market guidance at all. So many unnecessary middle-men.
UBIs make sense when you want to benefit from market guidance. They’re great for that, but for lots of things everyone uses or where consumer selection mechanics break down, there are tons of ways to make them free at the point of use. Is management and corruption a potential problem? Yes… regardless of which system you implement. So you might as well use the best tool for the given need and learn to do it well.
Universal housing can look like the government acquiring existing apartments from disinterested landlords that are out of compliance and then granting them on a $1 lease in perpetuity to local neighborhood coops so long as they maintain it well.
Not a complete fan, except that fines so large as the remedy is confiscation can be appropriate. No need to give away the confiscated property, though UBI would allow for tenant managed coops offering a fair bid. I’d rather see soviet style housing meant to provide a return for the builder, but affordable. UBI means there are no projects with “exclusive access” being for the troubled.
Universal food can look like mandates for grocery stores to provide non-profit collectives unfettered access to discarded items that are still perfectly edible instead of locking up dumpsters full of food that can feed people.
UBI is better. Nothing stopping grocery stores from taking advantage of non-profit collectives, compared to usual for profit alternatives. It’s in their interest to provide food quality/value.
Free public transit is another great example. Do you want to have to include bus fare in the UBI? Or would it just make sense to make the buses and trains fare-free.
Free public transit offers denser transit schedules, traffic reduction, better value for work and “touristy” outings. UBI solving homelessness helps avoid turning a “cheap shelter” into a “free shelter” for “undesirables” that may make transit uncomfortable to others.
Why give people a voucher instead of just reimbursing all accredited schools directly and let folks enroll anywhere without having to manage a budget?
Before university grades, you don’t need accredited schools as much as accredited testing. Internet/multimedia (30 years old revolution) has expanded education alternatives. Cash instead of vouchers. Spend as much as you want on education.
http://www.naturalfinance.net/2015/05/slashing-public-education-can-provide.html
Just make them tuition free.
For University grades, it is rationed, and there is a minimum aptitude level required to gain from the experience. Would Harvard be allowed to exist alongside a public tuition free abundant system? I support subsidizing post secondary education similar to Canada (maybe outdated) where a summer job could pay for tuition and books. UBI, though, is plenty to afford university dorm + tuition lifestyle, but perhaps, if you can get into Harvard, you might prefer additional student loans if you consider the education worth the tuition price. The magic of UBI, is that you get to consider the overall value of education instead of “student program” scams on the young and foolish.
To avoid an endless debate, I propose we agree that UBI is a good thing that we should test in more circumstances, and programs to provide more things free of cost (which do allow UBIs to achieve more spending power per dollar) are worth testing.
If such programs perform poorly in a trial, then it’s good that we tested them. And if some perform better than you expect, it’s also good that we tested them.
We need to test UBI the same way we need to test the abolition of slavery. It’s a delay to implementation, and some people wouldn’t like it.
I was talking about trials of universal services.
I gotta tell you: if you want to be the spokesperson for a movement, you need to learn how to build goodwill. You’re coming off as combative and needlessly hostile when I’m trying to find common ground.
My pie in the sky hope for UBI is that it would be large enough so that you don’t need to work to live, maybe with some frugality.
At that point I’d be fine with scrapping minimum wage altogether. Companies would have to offer a job/salary that attracts people who aren’t desperate.
It would be much easier to quit a job. And I think it would broadly increase the value of labor. Automation would increase, but that wouldn’t be a problem, because its no longer a problem to be unemployed.
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I love the idea but how would it be paid for? Quick back of the envelope sums says if you pay every adult the government living wage in the UK, it would cost around 950bn… uk government expenditure for everything is just under 700bn a year at the moment…
I don’t know how it would be paid for. It’s probably prohibitively expensive. But I think it would be cheaper than the product of UBI*population. Poverty is very expensive for a country, and would be reduced by like 80% (made up number).
I’d draw money from my other pie in the sky policies, like ~100% marginal tax on wealth above $500M, and on incomes above $5M/yr. Realistically, I think this would cause wealth flight, so it would have to be global to work.
I don’t expect any of this to happen in my lifetime. A more realistic hope is a UBI that you can’t survive on, but that keeps you from poverty. Maybe a UBI that equals the poverty line. But then I’d want to keep the minimum wage.
Exactly, UBI (or direct payments from the gov, whatever works ig) to support everyone’s basic needs. Housing properly sized to each family, food, water, electric, heating/cooling, healthcare and yes even internet. Maybe even a little extra disposable so people can have recreational activities and you know, live.
If you want luxury items, like the latest, greatest most expensive iPhone or whatever thats where you need to get a job to earn extra above the UBI
Yes
I’ve soured on it recently, if you gave everyone $1000 a month then your landlord is just going to raise your rent by $1000.
If full socialism is out of the picture, and we could enact something like UBI I think we should expand disability and social security for those who can’t work and then do a universal guaranteed jobs program for those who can work because:
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It’s way more politically viable. It’s going to be almost impossible to convince a majority of Americans to “pay people to sit around all day”. They’d be way more open to it if they’re doing a job.
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We could use the labor on fields that the market doesn’t value, such as building green infrastructure or social work for low income individuals. This would go along with expanding the definition of a job to any work that is benefiting society. If you’re a parent spending all your time caring for a young or disabled child then that’s a job and you should get paid for it.
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It you increase the wage for these guaranteed jobs that effectively raises the minimum wage since the private employers have to compete with the government. Why work at McDonald’s for $10 an hour when the government is paying $15. If you raise UBI that may decrease wages as employers will use it as an excuse to pay less.
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Even for people making above minimum wage it gives the worker more bargaining power since your employer loses the threat of throwing you onto the streets. This is also true for UBI but only if it’s enough to fully cover a comfortable life which I don’t think will happen due to the inflation it may cause.
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It increases production which can help to increase supply and cover for the increase in demand giving people that much money will cause so inflation is checked more.
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People neeed a job, as in the expanded definition I gave above, it’s a big part of how people make meaning in there life. The best case for someone not working would be they just play video games all day, worst case they turn to drug use.
I’ve soured on it recently, if you gave everyone $1000 a month then your landlord is just going to raise your rent by $1000.
UBI empowers tenants and alternate living situations.
- Every neighbourhood is instantly gentrified. That can be higher rents, but its good for shopping deserts and no crime.
- You have “move out” money if the landlord is an asshole.
- Renting rooms to people is lower risk because you know they can pay.
- Home ownership, is more bankable because you have income security independent of your job. Again, subleting/renting parts of home is easier if you lose your job.
- You can move to brand new area, including lower cost “ghost town” areas without having a job lined up first.
- If you don’t want to work, you don’t really need to be living in high cost city. Smaller/cheaper towns look fine.
Sure people will want nicer places to live, but there’s more options than renting with UBI, and other power dynamics that permit tenants to escape due to other options.
then your landlord is just going to raise your rent by $1000
Then I’ll move and his income drops to zero. Market forces don’t disappear just because there’s UBI.
It won’t drop to zero since someone else will come in who will give them the extra $1000 because they need a place to live. Market forces don’t dissappear with UBI, that’s why when aggregate demand goes up and supply stays fixed, such as with housing, prices go up.
Say you pay $1500 for rent and there’s another guy who pays $1200 and wants to upgrade to your apt. They get the $1000 UBI and now they have enough to bid up to $2200 for your apt. Now either you pay $2300 or your landlord evicts you to get the higher paying tenant. This percolates up and down the housing ladder from the homeless person who gets $1000 only to see rents increase to $1500 to the millionaire who now has to pay an extra $1000 drop in the bucket for there high-rise in Manhattan.
In capitalism your standard of living is determined by your ability to outbid the person on the rung below you to maintain that lifestyle. If everyone moves up a rung then nothing changes.
that’s why when aggregate demand goes up and supply stays fixed, such as with housing, prices go up.
Why would supply stay fixed? People can and do build new housing, especially when aggregate demand goes up.
Like I said, market forces don’t go away.
Demand goes up but not production. Adding UBI doesn’t increase the amount of wood harvested, or bricks produced or construction workers. In fact some construction workers may quit and go on UBI, lowering the production.
If demand goes up without production increasing, and thus supply, prices go up. This is part of the reason for the latest round of inflation, demand shot up after the pandemic but production was still at pandemic levels and yet to ramp back up.
Production in a lot of other places can ramp up relatively quickly to match demand if the infrastructure is built out already. In housing though production in general is slow and also slow to ramp up. It can take 2-3 years to build a house, and housing production takes years to increase. That’s part of the reason housing is still so high right now, housing production plummeted after 2008 and we haven’t gotten back to that even though prices and demand has skyrocketed.
All this is to say if UBI goes in it’ll take years for the supply to increase, I think they’re estimating housing production won’t get up to match the current new high prices now until 2030. Meanwhile your landlord is increasing your rent as soon as you renew, and rents don’t tend to ever go down after they’re set. This is if new housing can be built at all, a lot of places in America are zoned for single family housing and all the land is taken so no new housing can be built, housing production is limited by desirable and developable land and that just doesnt exist in a lot of places.
This is all if you don’t increase production, which the government can do, but they don’t right now and they definitely won’t if UBI comes in and replaces section 8 and all other welfare. If you do a universal jobs program though you can use those people to build affordable and public housing.
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I am a moderate supporter of UBI. Strongly support “negative income taxing” which is a bit more techy but essentially your income is topped up if it falls below a certain level as opposed to everyone getting a lump sum each month whether they need it or not.
The advantage of a straightforward UBI over NIT is that voters are selfish and stupid. If everyone gets a check, they are far more likely to support maintaining and increasing the benefit. It also removes the stigma that would be present for those receiving NIT payments.
Never considered the “voters are stupid and greedy” angle… but they are so you might be right here.
The main argument against NIT which I’d always heard was that you were losing the savings on administration that UBI has. In theory with UBI you can get rid of all disabilities and public pensions beaurocracy and means-testing since everyone gets the same lump sum.
NIT has some form of means-testing since you need to catalog who earns what to find those in need.
I think this is a good place to start as the initial recipients are those most in need.
I’m a fan of UB I+S. Universal basic income AND universal basic services. Plus
highthigh taxes for the rich. And workplace democracy. And a massive shift of the economy to the nonprofit sector: if what yourcompanymultimillion corporation is providing is a utility, you can’t have making a profit be your fiduciary responsibility.Basically, fuck capitalism, I want socialism.
Exactly this. Beware of the Silicon Valley tech bros selling their version of UBI. It’s a Trojan horse they want to use to cut all social services.
Though i dont disagree in theory, beware of the utility part you mentioned. A plumber is providing a service and im not sure why he shouldnt make a small profit on top of his ubi in that world of yours. Can you elaborate?
I’m thinking more of the “commanding heights of the economy”, rather than small time professionals. So, I’m talking Amazon, Google, Walmart, that stuff.
I know what you meant, and i dont disagree with the core of it really. Just really think about your wording, as it hits more people than youd think :)
Got it. I edited for clarity.
plus hight taxes for the rich
Nobody should be rich and tall! \s
Lol, fixed
