If there werw Basic Income, Belasco would be bringing in an extra giant pile of cash instead of being completely uncompensated for the time she spent raising our family, while I worked a standard job, enabling us to live like DINKs on a single income.
Unless you intend to disincentivize marriage and corrode the social order...
I don't think the second necessarily follows from the first....
Can you explain? Because the options here are either every citizen gets the same amount of basic income, or a married couple gets less then two single people. The first is neutral with regards to marriage, but the second one disincentivizes marriage, and does corrode the social order as a result.
If everyone has a basic income, no one need stay in a relationship just because they can't support themselves. Arguably this disincentivizes marriage and "corrodes the social order" by promoting independence.
No, it doesn't arguably do that, because the incentive to marry remains.
Also, if you're unemployed and applying somewhere - try to find a contact for the job with a phone or direct email and ask for the hiring manager info for an informational interview to learn more about the job. Quite often in f500 land we're forced to use terrible recruiters and don't see all the apps. Doing the above gives you a chance at an in.
@Mill can we get the tips like these that will actually help anyone unemployed added to the OP?
In a lot of cases, IMO, those long lists of requirements are really there just to limit/thin the number of applicants down to something HR can skim through and/or interview in a reasonable amount of time. The labor oversupply is that bad (in some fields) right now.
Not in Entry level IT. We want basic computer troubleshooting skills and some technical mental habits, and we get resumes from "literally no IT at all" to "15yrs SysAdmin"... but we get very few actual entry level apps.
You say this.
But in most cases, your employer excluded here I guess, entry level wants 4 years of experience and a half a decade worth of skills. This is the unfortunate side effect of "everyone has a degree, so..." and "~30% of people are unemployed or underemployed" which is why you're seeing 15 year sysadmins in your queue.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
If there werw Basic Income, Belasco would be bringing in an extra giant pile of cash instead of being completely uncompensated for the time she spent raising our family, while I worked a standard job, enabling us to live like DINKs on a single income.
Unless you intend to disincentivize marriage and corrode the social order...
Actually it'd be more like TWINKs..most basic income proposals don't care if you're working or not, so triple income (that's why it's basic income and not unemployment)
In practice, not so much of course as most BIs are at a "pay the rent and food" level, so if you're making a decent amount the BI would be a bonus, not a double income.
(yes this entire post was just an excuse to TWINKs)
+1
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
But in most cases, your employer excluded here I guess, entry level wants 4 years of experience and a half a decade worth of skills. This is the unfortunate side effect of "everyone has a degree, so..." and "~30% of people are unemployed or underemployed" which is why you're seeing 15 year sysadmins in your queue.
Not to mention the classic "5 years exp with something that's only been out for 3 years"
But in most cases, your employer excluded here I guess, entry level wants 4 years of experience and a half a decade worth of skills. This is the unfortunate side effect of "everyone has a degree, so..." and "~30% of people are unemployed or underemployed" which is why you're seeing 15 year sysadmins in your queue.
Not to mention the classic "5 years exp with something that's only been out for 3 years"
No no, that's so they can hire H1Bs and not pay them well after claiming they can't find anyone with the qualifications, because they gotta train them, y'know!
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
If there werw Basic Income, Belasco would be bringing in an extra giant pile of cash instead of being completely uncompensated for the time she spent raising our family, while I worked a standard job, enabling us to live like DINKs on a single income.
Unless you intend to disincentivize marriage and corrode the social order...
Actually it'd be more like TWINKs..most basic income proposals don't care if you're working or not, so triple income (that's why it's basic income and not unemployment)
In practice, not so much of course as most BIs are at a "pay the rent and food" level, so if you're making a decent amount the BI would be a bonus, not a double income.
(yes this entire post was just an excuse to TWINKs)
I'm personally more of a fan of basic income that decreases with earned income. One of Canada's attempts lowered it by fifty cents for every dollar earned. The only real issue I see arising from that is how to go about decreasing it once someone is making money.
If there werw Basic Income, Belasco would be bringing in an extra giant pile of cash instead of being completely uncompensated for the time she spent raising our family, while I worked a standard job, enabling us to live like DINKs on a single income.
Unless you intend to disincentivize marriage and corrode the social order...
Actually it'd be more like TWINKs..most basic income proposals don't care if you're working or not, so triple income (that's why it's basic income and not unemployment)
In practice, not so much of course as most BIs are at a "pay the rent and food" level, so if you're making a decent amount the BI would be a bonus, not a double income.
(yes this entire post was just an excuse to TWINKs)
I'm personally more of a fan of basic income that decreases with earned income. One of Canada's attempts lowered it by fifty cents for every dollar earned. The only real issue I see arising from that is how to go about decreasing it once someone is making money.
This is basically how Universal Credit (which isn't UBI, it's based on showing 38 hours a week of job hunting) works in the UK. It's our replacement for the Job Seekers Allowance and one of the key differences is that you can be working (up to about £300 a month in income) and still get UC, reduced by 66p for every pound you take home.
It's a pain because you have to report earnings and stuff pretty strictly but it helps prevent the situation JSA would have where taking on a one time shift or temp contract that lasted a week meant you had to re-apply through the whole process.
If there werw Basic Income, Belasco would be bringing in an extra giant pile of cash instead of being completely uncompensated for the time she spent raising our family, while I worked a standard job, enabling us to live like DINKs on a single income.
Unless you intend to disincentivize marriage and corrode the social order...
Actually it'd be more like TWINKs..most basic income proposals don't care if you're working or not, so triple income (that's why it's basic income and not unemployment)
In practice, not so much of course as most BIs are at a "pay the rent and food" level, so if you're making a decent amount the BI would be a bonus, not a double income.
(yes this entire post was just an excuse to TWINKs)
I'm personally more of a fan of basic income that decreases with earned income. One of Canada's attempts lowered it by fifty cents for every dollar earned. The only real issue I see arising from that is how to go about decreasing it once someone is making money.
It should probably start much lower and ramp up quicker as you make more money.
Start at 10 cents per dollar, then finalize at 50 cents per dollar until you lose it. Linear curves for things like this tend to be punitive to people wanting to start taking advantage of other programs. You see similar issues with food stamps and SSI (which people incorrectly attribute to tax brackets) where making $1 more an hour could potentially mean they lose all of their EBT funds, which would put them in a worse financial position. EBT isn't quite as bad as it used to be, but it's still pretty penalizing for people trying to get out of their station.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
If there werw Basic Income, Belasco would be bringing in an extra giant pile of cash instead of being completely uncompensated for the time she spent raising our family, while I worked a standard job, enabling us to live like DINKs on a single income.
Unless you intend to disincentivize marriage and corrode the social order...
Actually it'd be more like TWINKs..most basic income proposals don't care if you're working or not, so triple income (that's why it's basic income and not unemployment)
In practice, not so much of course as most BIs are at a "pay the rent and food" level, so if you're making a decent amount the BI would be a bonus, not a double income.
(yes this entire post was just an excuse to TWINKs)
I'm personally more of a fan of basic income that decreases with earned income. One of Canada's attempts lowered it by fifty cents for every dollar earned. The only real issue I see arising from that is how to go about decreasing it once someone is making money.
This is basically how Universal Credit (which isn't UBI, it's based on showing 38 hours a week of job hunting) works in the UK. It's our replacement for the Job Seekers Allowance and one of the key differences is that you can be working (up to about £300 a month in income) and still get UC, reduced by 66p for every pound you take home.
It's a pain because you have to report earnings and stuff pretty strictly but it helps prevent the situation JSA would have where taking on a one time shift or temp contract that lasted a week meant you had to re-apply through the whole process.
I think I really like this idea. How do you go about proving you spent the required time job hunting? How successful of a program has it been? Honestly this is how I've always thought things like unemployment should be set up so I'm curious if it's been successful in practice.
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
"This work takes years of training" followed by "The complicated jobs, which pay $12 to $20 an hour, plus health care and benefits"
hey
here's your fucking problem
that's not enough money for a job that takes years of training on industry specific machinery
forget the drugs this is basic economics, supply and demand
you can go get $12 an hour doing basically anything, that's not a number that brings in talent
With razor thin margins and ultimate speed of delivery the only thing that keeps them competitive with overseas entities.
Where does the money come from to make them job worth doing? idk.
Then maybe it's not a great business plan if you require cheap labor to even make a profit?
True, they could just close the plant and pay everyone $0 and then we rotate back to example #1 in the OP.
This just does back to the ridiculous idea that the very notion of businesses employing their workforce is altruistic; that if not for their devaluing of workers in favor of profit, there wouldn't be any jobs at all, so you should be thankful for what you've got
This is nonsense, I'm sorry. Without profit, there is no business. They're not "devaluing workers in favor of profit", they're paying what they can while still making a profit with thin margins and very strong overseas competition.
If they decided to forego profit, there wouldn't be any jobs... so no it's not altruism. And no people shouldn't be thankful to be underpaid. But the reality is that in some situations it absolutely a choice between being underpaid and being on unemployment, because the businesses can't compete at a revenue point that lets them raise wages.
Not sure how this address whether or not this should still be a business other than "it means a loss of jobs!" As a business owner the onus is on the owner to make money while paying their workers a fair and living wage. Businesses don't get to exist solely on the merit of being a business.
It's actually not. It's the onus of the owner to please the board and remain profitable. Employers who do pay a fair and living wage are much more likely to have more productive workers who enjoy going to work.
The only way to ensure a fair and living wage would be for the state to step in. But then you're back to this employer crashing and burning and all of the employees being unemployed again.
It's ultimately in a business owner's best interest to keep their labor happy and productive. It makes business sense, and sadly I don't see that as the norm rather than the exception.
Still seems to be assuming that their competitors are playing fairly. If a competitor is in a place where they can exploit their workforce then it is hard for a company to find a profit.
In this case I'm thinking of textile companies that are notorious for exploiting labor in third world countries like Bangladesh.
can robots be exploited? because that's where this ends.
Robots aren't exploited because they aren't paid for their service. They're purchased and maintained, but aren't given money. Robots are capital-goods used to produce goods.
ah, problem solved then!
We should all look forward to this glorious future and the end of worker exploitation.
Just to extrapolate some more:
A world where robots perform all labor and goods-production basically reaches a level of socialist, techno-utopianism. The marginal costs of production (which is where the price of a good comes from) approaches zero and results in a dramatic drop in prices and no more actual need for goods-production. We've basically been approaching this already, but the costs of production have remained relatively stable or have increased mostly due to advances in the use of marketing/advertising, information technology and business services, and etc. Material production costs have dramatically decreased, but customer service and IT maintenance have increased to offset it.
What I've imagined for this level of robotic employment is a society in which the government owns, maintains, and operates all goods production because a government is the only entity capable of operating business-like services without worry for profitability because of its intrinsically monopolistic economy of scale. To exemplify this look at the US postal service: it's unprofitable for companies like UPS, FedEx, or Amazon to send goods to rural areas because they aren't sending enough goods to offset the costs of operation. The USPS can though because it's doesn't worry for profitability (to a certain extent. The caveat to this is, of course, the further erosion of this service due to political privatization. Nonetheless, it's a great example, especially in countries like Japan where the postal service is not only fully-funded, but also has come to operate as an insurance and banking company. This was one of the main ways Japan in the post-war period reached such high levels of savings; they brought in rural customers to deposit their cash accounts with the postal service since privatized banks wouldn't have branches anywhere nearby, but I digress).
Regardless, if we reach this point (which we won't, to be fair, cause the second law of thermodynamics proves that there will always be a marginal cost for production), it would represent an absolutely massive shift in societal/political organization. It could be done slowly over time with the government taking on more of subsistence-goods production in order to equally distribute such goods across society (think food production, water, housing, etc. We already have this to a certain extent with the welfare state, but it would be taken to a completely other level with this type of shift).
We'll probably see something similar to this in the long-term; artificial intelligence and automated manufacturing/services represents the ultimate embodiment of the capital substitution for labor that is the single most important factor in capitalism.
The entire reason we (USians) live in a highly developed, extremely rich society is because of people doing their job. Even putting aside the costs of UBI being a living wage (larger than the entire federal budget prohibitive), it would be explicitly shrinking the economy in a big way for everyone it takes out of the labor force. Just because a job isn't fun or has low pay doesn't mean it doesn't provide value. The reason being an amateur Arabic translator or Etsy dabbler isn't viable now is largely because they aren't nearly as productive as jobs that have been identified as viable. And when an economy shrinks, secondary jobs like that don't become more viable. They're the first to go because people have less spare money to spend on non-essentials (which itself would shrink the economy). A weaker economy with higher costs means stagflation, which is basically the worst state an economy can be in.
This is one of the most insidious things right wing ideology has put out into the zeitgeist is that labor is worthless and executives are the ones who "create wealth." Labor creates wealth. Taking labor out of the economic fucks the economy. A prosperous economy is what allows both a social safety net and activities that aren't purely productive - education and art and hobbies - something people can spend time on.
First, not all of the U.S. live in a 'highly developed, extremely rich society'. NYC, California & Texas do fairly well, likely due to having large coastal footprints. Most of the American landmass is not doing terribly well relative to the rest of the industrialized world.
Second, all of the field you dismiss as 'secondary' are the primary reasons we have industrialized society at all. Why do the welders or miners or retail clerks or pump jocks go to work every day? So they can spend their earnings on cultural capital as well as survive. If there weren't books or films or video games or [insert fulfilling hobby here] as incentive, nobody would fucking go to work or try to become entrepreneurs.
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
And this would be the quickest way to kill UBI. You'll never get enough people on-board to support it, because people value themselves and their abilities over other people. The guy making 75k->87.5 looks around and sees the guy making 50k->75k and starts thinking, hey that guy isn't as smart as me, didn't go to school as long as me, and he's making almost as much as I am, THAT'S NOT FAIR!
The only way to get those people (and all of the right wing voters, even if they live in poverty currently), is if it's a flat additive amount where it's fair for everyone. Regardless of whether it's better policy or economics, it will never be politically viable unless it can be sold to the voters as fair for all.
Don't we have a mincome thread already? This is great discussion but it doesn't quite belong.
Re: unemployment, one way to make the system less shitty would be to have unemployment benefits be automatically granted *unless* a person was fired for a civil or criminal complaint. Even if you were fired "for cause," as long as that cause wasn't something illegal that you had done (employee theft, sexual harassment, etc) you're good.
+4
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Don't we have a mincome thread already? This is great discussion but it doesn't quite belong.
Re: unemployment, one way to make the system less shitty would be to have unemployment benefits be automatically granted *unless* a person was fired for a civil or criminal complaint. Even if you were fired "for cause," as long as that cause wasn't something illegal that you had done (employee theft, sexual harassment, etc) you're good.
In some states it is effectively like that. In other states it is whatever the employer says unless you sue them at your expense. It's very weird how divergent unemployment is in areas. Hell even Virginia vs Maryland is vastly different in process.
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Maybe he's talking about old ppl or students?
+1
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Maybe he's talking about old ppl or students?
Well, I would note that this doesn't actually address the problem. If 1/3rd of the U.S. population is in a position where they would be eligible for UBI because the alternative is falling through the floor, it doesn't particularly matter if that cohort is largely students or seniors; @PantsB is effectively claiming that those people can be left in the gutter because, hey, things are sunny on the trading floor of the NYSE. Sucks to be you if you don't have a retirement pension, have a disability that prevents you from working, cannot focus on your studies while also holding down a job, etc.
Canada is also a wealthy country, but the devil is in the details & a lot of people are left behind. The woman drinking out of that discarded Pepsi can probably is not getting her share of the treasure. If you're the fifth family who can't afford to feed their kids, all of the Silly Goose nonsense spouted by @PantsB to block them from getting help is probably not going to make them so inclined to believe in concepts like liberal democracy.
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
People are getting their terms mixed up. What Khavall was originally describing is a Minimum Guaranteed Income, it is conditional, and only guarantees a minimum for everyone. UBI is unconditional, and does not get reduced based on any factors, including subsequent earnings.
To my knowledge, all of the current UBI pilots, are just that, unconditional UBI, and do not get reduced upon employment or subsequent earnings.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
The incentive is that UBI is basically set at or near the existing poverty level or some other defined level. It is supposed to guarantee a base existence, free from hunger and want of shelter, but will does not allow unlimited spending money. The incentive is, if you want nicer things, get a job to supplement that. For much of the poor right now, it would replace many of the government assistance programs they already receive including SSI disability, welfare, food stamps, etc. But, it would guarantee that they wouldn't have to work 60 hours a week spread across 3 fast food jobs, just to put food on their table, and if they were so inclined to work that hard, even at minimum wage jobs, they would have a decent level of discretionary income to spend in the local economy.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
There is a hidden premise here that I don't grant, regarding why people do things. It is overly simplistic to boil down human behavior to, 'Does more work to get more money,' even if that is sometimes also true.
Why do people still try to climb Everest, even though they can no longer claim to be first, there's no material gain to be had from it & there is significant risk of death? Why do people write books & articles that never see widespread publication or never see publication at all? Why do people speedrun videogames even though they'll never likely post a world record & the act of practicing can turn an entertainment hobby into tedious / numbing work?
Etc.
'People won't work except at the end of a whip' is demonstrably wrong, and an attitude mostly propagated by those who wield the whips (go figure!).
With Love and Courage
+12
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
Hrmmmm the idea of UBI is intriguing, but I am suspicious of the cost, because honestly it would be horribly expensive to provide 100 bucks a week let alone 1k-2k a month, and I have always believed that people respond to incentives. What is the incentive to work?
To get more things than food and shelter.
I get that from an intellectual perspective, I just feel like there is a percentage of the population that will be content with just the UBI getting more stuff is fine there is definitely going to incentivize some people but others only work because they have to. I think a more practical solution is to make even shitty jobs pay decent wage. Also there's no way that you be I would ever pass Congress.
If they don't work, plenty of room for those that want to work to enter the workforce.
And yes, places like walmart will have to offer something other than "YOU NEED US TO EAT" to stay relevant.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Putting aside that there hasn't been any substantially sized pilot programs that would provide a reasonable model for a state level program let alone a national one, that's simply untrue and any reading on the negative income tax experiments of the 60s and 70s in the US or MINCOME in Canada would disprove it.
And I say that because I understand what a normal labor participation rate is, especially for prime working age brackets.
Social Security is, for all intents and purposes, a UBI program.
This is true and while I like the idea of a Social Security for everyone, it runs into the two problems of it will never pass Congress. And it is really expensive. Even capturing Medicare Medicaid and Social Security. We would need to double total tax revenue.
Social Security is, for all intents and purposes, a UBI program.
Not really. You only get Social Security if and to the extent that you've paid into the system (or potentially that your spouse has).
One supposed advantage is you save money in a UBI program is everyone gets it with no means testing. But in order to give everyone a living wage, the cost becomes insanely prohibitively expensive. So then it goes to a minimum guaranteed income which becomes more and more complicated as secondary effects and unintended consequences get examined while expensive to the point of dwarfing the most generous welfare states.
It turns out poverty can't be simply outlawed and is a deep and complex problem that doesn't have simple answers.
Social Security is, for all intents and purposes, a UBI program.
This is true and while I like the idea of a Social Security for everyone, it's the ones in to the two problems of it will never pass Congress. And it is really expensive. Even capturing Medicare Medicaid and Social Security. We would need to double total tax revenue.
Crank up tax on the ultra wealthy again, get rid of SSI and SSI-D programs, capture that into the program itself, absorb health insurance into medicare and give everyone medicare coverage.
Then we can talk about addressing unemployment. It might not even need addressing. The whole point of technology and the industrial revolution was, at some point, we were going to run out of work in a society that is practically post scarcity. It was at some level that a normal work week was going to be 20 hours instead of 40.
So it'd be more like 4 hours of work, 12 hours of play, and 8 hours of sleep.
with the eventual goal of 16 hours of play
To get to those numbers, we unfortunately need to capture production as a society and move away from capitalism. Free market can still be a thing, I heavily believe everyone should have a right to choose when and what they purchase, but I don't think "pay you for your work" is feasible long term over the next 20+ years anymore.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Social Security is, for all intents and purposes, a UBI program.
This is true and while I like the idea of a Social Security for everyone, it runs into the two problems of it will never pass Congress. And it is really expensive. Even capturing Medicare Medicaid and Social Security. We would need to double total tax revenue.
Bear in mind that in many cases when UBI is pitched to a conservative viewpoint it also entails cutting almost all, if not all of the specialized low-income services.
Don't need Unemployment, Food Stamps, etc. if everyone just has a basic amount of money. This saves the actual money invested in these programs as well as greatly reducing overhead.
Now, yes, we'd still need re-structuring of government income, but we need that anyways.
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Putting aside that there hasn't been any substantially sized pilot programs that would provide a reasonable model for a state level program let alone a national one, that's simply untrue and any reading on the negative income tax experiments of the 60s and 70s in the US or MINCOME in Canada would disprove it.
As far as I can tell, the MINCOME trials went pretty well in Canada; it disincentivized work, but weakly
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
near as I can tell, when places institute things like UBI, it disincentives shitty work.
IE, no more walmart or gas station workers without a hefty pay increase to cover how shitty the work is and how shitty the boss is. Also culture changes since the person is no longer dependent on the job to exist in society. If you're getting treated like shit, you can just leave, so more power in the hands of the workers is good. This has the added benefit of increasing salaries in other industries because, why work for you if I can just not work or go work where I'm appreciated.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah the best framework's I've seen have basically been restructuring of both when and where income taxes start and where UBI ends, to give sort of a basic sliding progressive scale.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Putting aside that there hasn't been any substantially sized pilot programs that would provide a reasonable model for a state level program let alone a national one, that's simply untrue and any reading on the negative income tax experiments of the 60s and 70s in the US or MINCOME in Canada would disprove it.
As far as I can tell, the MINCOME trials went pretty well in Canada; it disincentivized work, but weakly
That disincentivization is a perk if the goal is to reduce the amount of hours worked by week.
Putting aside that there hasn't been any substantially sized pilot programs that would provide a reasonable model for a state level program let alone a national one, that's simply untrue and any reading on the negative income tax experiments of the 60s and 70s in the US or MINCOME in Canada would disprove it.
As far as I can tell, the MINCOME trials went pretty well in Canada; it disincentivized work, but weakly
It didn't cause widespread havok but the limited analysis we have does show reduced labor participation when overall labor participation was increasing pretty substantially (due to demographic and gender changes largely). The payments also only brought the 1290 families/individuals in the experiment up to 50% of current the poverty rate (adjusting for inflation of course). There's only data on 590 of them (because a little more than half didn't fill out the surveys) so there's also a sample size question. They showed single digit % reduction in labor participation (~5%) instead of the low double digit rate in the US (~12%) but thats still non-trivial. I also expect if an actual living wage was provided, it would have had a greater effect.
I mean it even came up in this thread because people would rather not have to work their current job. That's a pretty good indicator of the expectations of such a program as a disincentive to work.
I don't want to work my job because it's shitty and I rely on it for basic necessities.
That doesn't mean I would never work again, but it'd allow me to reevaluate my life choices instead of "I can make a decent living doing this". I've wanted to be a doctor for a while, but it's outside of the realm of possibles because it's expensive and putting my living expenses for 6+ years on a school loan is scary as fuck.
Now if I didn't have to worry about that shit...
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Posts
No, it doesn't arguably do that, because the incentive to marry remains.
Just want to warn everyone that this thread is about unemployment and not about the societal merits of marriage.
@Mill can we get the tips like these that will actually help anyone unemployed added to the OP?
You say this.
But in most cases, your employer excluded here I guess, entry level wants 4 years of experience and a half a decade worth of skills. This is the unfortunate side effect of "everyone has a degree, so..." and "~30% of people are unemployed or underemployed" which is why you're seeing 15 year sysadmins in your queue.
Actually it'd be more like TWINKs..most basic income proposals don't care if you're working or not, so triple income (that's why it's basic income and not unemployment)
In practice, not so much of course as most BIs are at a "pay the rent and food" level, so if you're making a decent amount the BI would be a bonus, not a double income.
(yes this entire post was just an excuse to TWINKs)
No no, that's so they can hire H1Bs and not pay them well after claiming they can't find anyone with the qualifications, because they gotta train them, y'know!
I'm personally more of a fan of basic income that decreases with earned income. One of Canada's attempts lowered it by fifty cents for every dollar earned. The only real issue I see arising from that is how to go about decreasing it once someone is making money.
This is basically how Universal Credit (which isn't UBI, it's based on showing 38 hours a week of job hunting) works in the UK. It's our replacement for the Job Seekers Allowance and one of the key differences is that you can be working (up to about £300 a month in income) and still get UC, reduced by 66p for every pound you take home.
It's a pain because you have to report earnings and stuff pretty strictly but it helps prevent the situation JSA would have where taking on a one time shift or temp contract that lasted a week meant you had to re-apply through the whole process.
It should probably start much lower and ramp up quicker as you make more money.
Start at 10 cents per dollar, then finalize at 50 cents per dollar until you lose it. Linear curves for things like this tend to be punitive to people wanting to start taking advantage of other programs. You see similar issues with food stamps and SSI (which people incorrectly attribute to tax brackets) where making $1 more an hour could potentially mean they lose all of their EBT funds, which would put them in a worse financial position. EBT isn't quite as bad as it used to be, but it's still pretty penalizing for people trying to get out of their station.
I think I really like this idea. How do you go about proving you spent the required time job hunting? How successful of a program has it been? Honestly this is how I've always thought things like unemployment should be set up so I'm curious if it's been successful in practice.
If you make nothing, you get, let's say 50k UBI(Because that's an easy number, not necessarily because that's a good number).
Every dollar you make over 0 loses 50c from UBI(I like the idea of scaling it, but I'm not sure exactly where that would go). So if you make 25k in a job, you get 37.5k from UBI plus your 25k for a total of 62.5k.
If you make 50k in a job, you lose 25k from your UBI and end up with 75k.
etc. etc. etc.
This serves to a: make sure that no matter what, people are surviving, and b: encourage work, though encourage it on a scale where the person has to be actually getting something from the work. Maybe that something is "If I work 2-3 days a week at the office, I can buy a fancy new TV" or maybe it's "I go crazy if I'm just home alone, and I really like running fitness classes, so I'll run a fitness class or two at the gym and also pick up some spare cash"
Eventually, you get to 100k earned income, which completely negates the UBI, nobody over 100k gets any money from UBI. It's also not until here that income taxes start, which continue to be progressively scaled with the normal brackets and everything. So if you make 125k, you pay taxes only on the 25k, etc. etc.
In my perfect pseudo-socialist world we'd also have taxes that scale kind of ridiculously up, but that's a story for another day.
Just to extrapolate some more:
A world where robots perform all labor and goods-production basically reaches a level of socialist, techno-utopianism. The marginal costs of production (which is where the price of a good comes from) approaches zero and results in a dramatic drop in prices and no more actual need for goods-production. We've basically been approaching this already, but the costs of production have remained relatively stable or have increased mostly due to advances in the use of marketing/advertising, information technology and business services, and etc. Material production costs have dramatically decreased, but customer service and IT maintenance have increased to offset it.
What I've imagined for this level of robotic employment is a society in which the government owns, maintains, and operates all goods production because a government is the only entity capable of operating business-like services without worry for profitability because of its intrinsically monopolistic economy of scale. To exemplify this look at the US postal service: it's unprofitable for companies like UPS, FedEx, or Amazon to send goods to rural areas because they aren't sending enough goods to offset the costs of operation. The USPS can though because it's doesn't worry for profitability (to a certain extent. The caveat to this is, of course, the further erosion of this service due to political privatization. Nonetheless, it's a great example, especially in countries like Japan where the postal service is not only fully-funded, but also has come to operate as an insurance and banking company. This was one of the main ways Japan in the post-war period reached such high levels of savings; they brought in rural customers to deposit their cash accounts with the postal service since privatized banks wouldn't have branches anywhere nearby, but I digress).
Regardless, if we reach this point (which we won't, to be fair, cause the second law of thermodynamics proves that there will always be a marginal cost for production), it would represent an absolutely massive shift in societal/political organization. It could be done slowly over time with the government taking on more of subsistence-goods production in order to equally distribute such goods across society (think food production, water, housing, etc. We already have this to a certain extent with the welfare state, but it would be taken to a completely other level with this type of shift).
We'll probably see something similar to this in the long-term; artificial intelligence and automated manufacturing/services represents the ultimate embodiment of the capital substitution for labor that is the single most important factor in capitalism.
First, not all of the U.S. live in a 'highly developed, extremely rich society'. NYC, California & Texas do fairly well, likely due to having large coastal footprints. Most of the American landmass is not doing terribly well relative to the rest of the industrialized world.
Second, all of the field you dismiss as 'secondary' are the primary reasons we have industrialized society at all. Why do the welders or miners or retail clerks or pump jocks go to work every day? So they can spend their earnings on cultural capital as well as survive. If there weren't books or films or video games or [insert fulfilling hobby here] as incentive, nobody would fucking go to work or try to become entrepreneurs.
And this would be the quickest way to kill UBI. You'll never get enough people on-board to support it, because people value themselves and their abilities over other people. The guy making 75k->87.5 looks around and sees the guy making 50k->75k and starts thinking, hey that guy isn't as smart as me, didn't go to school as long as me, and he's making almost as much as I am, THAT'S NOT FAIR!
The only way to get those people (and all of the right wing voters, even if they live in poverty currently), is if it's a flat additive amount where it's fair for everyone. Regardless of whether it's better policy or economics, it will never be politically viable unless it can be sold to the voters as fair for all.
Re: unemployment, one way to make the system less shitty would be to have unemployment benefits be automatically granted *unless* a person was fired for a civil or criminal complaint. Even if you were fired "for cause," as long as that cause wasn't something illegal that you had done (employee theft, sexual harassment, etc) you're good.
That functions effectively as a 50% tax rate on the first 50K you make. That definitely discourages work, which would have a major depressionary effect.
And at those rates if we used current employment figures it would cost a ridiculous amount of money.
250 million (US adult population) x (1/3 not in labor force) x 50K = 4.2 trillion a year. The entire US federal budget outlays was about 4 trillion in 2016 and that's before you get into the majority of workers who earn less than 50K right now. It would be another several trillion when you took them into account.
That's before you factor in how many people are unwilling to work at a 50% effective tax rate (every dollar they earn they only actually get 0.50 benefit not taking into account any other payroll or income taxes) on their first $50K. If those earning less than 20K a year drop out, you're talking a cost of another 1.1 trillion while shrinking the economy by a couple hundred billion purely on their lost productivity.
Employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, not just between the employer and employee but also society. It should not be a goal to simply eliminate it. Even socialism with a Kapital S didn't envision a society equal indolence, but equal diligence.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The pilot programs for UBI have not demonstrated a substantial impact on employment figures. What evidence do you have to present that substantiates your speculation about how it would 'definitely discourage work'?
Also, how do you intend to square an acknowledgement that 1/3 of the U.S. population is not currently participating in the labor force with your claim that the U.S. is doing just fine & dandy?
Maybe he's talking about old ppl or students?
Well, I would note that this doesn't actually address the problem. If 1/3rd of the U.S. population is in a position where they would be eligible for UBI because the alternative is falling through the floor, it doesn't particularly matter if that cohort is largely students or seniors; @PantsB is effectively claiming that those people can be left in the gutter because, hey, things are sunny on the trading floor of the NYSE. Sucks to be you if you don't have a retirement pension, have a disability that prevents you from working, cannot focus on your studies while also holding down a job, etc.
Canada is also a wealthy country, but the devil is in the details & a lot of people are left behind. The woman drinking out of that discarded Pepsi can probably is not getting her share of the treasure. If you're the fifth family who can't afford to feed their kids, all of the Silly Goose nonsense spouted by @PantsB to block them from getting help is probably not going to make them so inclined to believe in concepts like liberal democracy.
People are getting their terms mixed up. What Khavall was originally describing is a Minimum Guaranteed Income, it is conditional, and only guarantees a minimum for everyone. UBI is unconditional, and does not get reduced based on any factors, including subsequent earnings.
To my knowledge, all of the current UBI pilots, are just that, unconditional UBI, and do not get reduced upon employment or subsequent earnings.
The incentive is that UBI is basically set at or near the existing poverty level or some other defined level. It is supposed to guarantee a base existence, free from hunger and want of shelter, but will does not allow unlimited spending money. The incentive is, if you want nicer things, get a job to supplement that. For much of the poor right now, it would replace many of the government assistance programs they already receive including SSI disability, welfare, food stamps, etc. But, it would guarantee that they wouldn't have to work 60 hours a week spread across 3 fast food jobs, just to put food on their table, and if they were so inclined to work that hard, even at minimum wage jobs, they would have a decent level of discretionary income to spend in the local economy.
To get more things than food and shelter.
There is a hidden premise here that I don't grant, regarding why people do things. It is overly simplistic to boil down human behavior to, 'Does more work to get more money,' even if that is sometimes also true.
Why do people still try to climb Everest, even though they can no longer claim to be first, there's no material gain to be had from it & there is significant risk of death? Why do people write books & articles that never see widespread publication or never see publication at all? Why do people speedrun videogames even though they'll never likely post a world record & the act of practicing can turn an entertainment hobby into tedious / numbing work?
Etc.
'People won't work except at the end of a whip' is demonstrably wrong, and an attitude mostly propagated by those who wield the whips (go figure!).
If they don't work, plenty of room for those that want to work to enter the workforce.
And yes, places like walmart will have to offer something other than "YOU NEED US TO EAT" to stay relevant.
And I say that because I understand what a normal labor participation rate is, especially for prime working age brackets.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
Not really. You only get Social Security if and to the extent that you've paid into the system (or potentially that your spouse has).
One supposed advantage is you save money in a UBI program is everyone gets it with no means testing. But in order to give everyone a living wage, the cost becomes insanely prohibitively expensive. So then it goes to a minimum guaranteed income which becomes more and more complicated as secondary effects and unintended consequences get examined while expensive to the point of dwarfing the most generous welfare states.
It turns out poverty can't be simply outlawed and is a deep and complex problem that doesn't have simple answers.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Crank up tax on the ultra wealthy again, get rid of SSI and SSI-D programs, capture that into the program itself, absorb health insurance into medicare and give everyone medicare coverage.
Then we can talk about addressing unemployment. It might not even need addressing. The whole point of technology and the industrial revolution was, at some point, we were going to run out of work in a society that is practically post scarcity. It was at some level that a normal work week was going to be 20 hours instead of 40.
So it'd be more like 4 hours of work, 12 hours of play, and 8 hours of sleep.
with the eventual goal of 16 hours of play
To get to those numbers, we unfortunately need to capture production as a society and move away from capitalism. Free market can still be a thing, I heavily believe everyone should have a right to choose when and what they purchase, but I don't think "pay you for your work" is feasible long term over the next 20+ years anymore.
Bear in mind that in many cases when UBI is pitched to a conservative viewpoint it also entails cutting almost all, if not all of the specialized low-income services.
Don't need Unemployment, Food Stamps, etc. if everyone just has a basic amount of money. This saves the actual money invested in these programs as well as greatly reducing overhead.
Now, yes, we'd still need re-structuring of government income, but we need that anyways.
As far as I can tell, the MINCOME trials went pretty well in Canada; it disincentivized work, but weakly
IE, no more walmart or gas station workers without a hefty pay increase to cover how shitty the work is and how shitty the boss is. Also culture changes since the person is no longer dependent on the job to exist in society. If you're getting treated like shit, you can just leave, so more power in the hands of the workers is good. This has the added benefit of increasing salaries in other industries because, why work for you if I can just not work or go work where I'm appreciated.
That disincentivization is a perk if the goal is to reduce the amount of hours worked by week.
It didn't cause widespread havok but the limited analysis we have does show reduced labor participation when overall labor participation was increasing pretty substantially (due to demographic and gender changes largely). The payments also only brought the 1290 families/individuals in the experiment up to 50% of current the poverty rate (adjusting for inflation of course). There's only data on 590 of them (because a little more than half didn't fill out the surveys) so there's also a sample size question. They showed single digit % reduction in labor participation (~5%) instead of the low double digit rate in the US (~12%) but thats still non-trivial. I also expect if an actual living wage was provided, it would have had a greater effect.
I mean it even came up in this thread because people would rather not have to work their current job. That's a pretty good indicator of the expectations of such a program as a disincentive to work.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
That doesn't mean I would never work again, but it'd allow me to reevaluate my life choices instead of "I can make a decent living doing this". I've wanted to be a doctor for a while, but it's outside of the realm of possibles because it's expensive and putting my living expenses for 6+ years on a school loan is scary as fuck.
Now if I didn't have to worry about that shit...