Poll of the Day > Some US States/Cities to start UBI Benefits...

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.the-sun.com/money/5180481/universal-basic-income-payment-schedule-live-applications-checks/

Good Idea? (Poll Question)

*reads articles*

Voting NO, because those programs are the polar opposite of "universal", and end up just being another giant handout to selected groups, on top of any others (which will continue to exist, even though UBI is supposed to replace them).
Being just above the income limits, which are still not even close to the upper limits of middle class, is such fucking bullshit.
"Yeah, I make $2,000 more than my neighbor, so the government decided arbitrarily that he should make $10,000 more than me when it's all said and done."

I don't object to UBI inherently, but it's more vulnerable to issues involving price gouging, inflation/deflation, etc, so I think a federal job guarantee is preferable and expanding unemployment/disability/social security are probably better options.

UBI is not a bad idea per se, but I don't really think our system as it is will mesh with it very well. I also think it needs to be implemented thoughtfully and that's, uh, not the impression I get from this particular attempt.

Gaawa_chan posted...

but it's more vulnerable to issues involving price gouging, inflation

Yea that's kind of a problem now...

streamofthesky posted...

"Yeah, I make $2,000 more than my neighbor, so the government decided arbitrarily that he should make $10,000 more than me when it's all said and done."

CERB ended up working like that, which I thought was really stupid. You were only eligible if you were making less than $1000/month, but if you were eligible, you got $2000/month. It made for a pretty sizable gap in coverage that left behind a lot of people that really needed it. I was lucky in that, once my work started back up again, my employer was careful not to push me over the $1000 threshold so I didn't lose the benefits, since they definitely didn't have $2000/month worth of work for me at that point (bakery, had been working part-time while in school before Covid hit, then they shut down and gradually ramped back up with a delivery/pickup service), but it really should have been a matter of topping people up to $2000/month instead.

pionear posted...

Yea that's kind of a problem now...

Inflation and consumer price index aren't the same thing... If UBI is being paid for by tax dollars it isn't new money entering the system, it has flat inflation. If the price of goods goes up, that's the consumer price index going up, not inflation.

........pedantically, since both are referred to as inflation colloquially.

Side note, it's not UBI if it's not Universal... it's a form of Basic Income, ya, but not universal.

which one? what?

rexcrk posted...

which one? what?

Sounds like hes asking if you agree or not

LinkPizza posted...

Sounds like hes asking if you agree or not

Be neat if he actually put that as the poll question so I knew wtf Im voting for.

It's not even basic income since there are requirements that basically make it a new form of welfare/child support for single parents.

That has pretty much existed for the last 50 years in one form or another and still already does, so this is just another form of that.

Now if it basically increased the income of ANYONE who made less than x amount up to X, that would be different, but if t hey did that, how would they keep people from moving there and flooding those areas (Especially homeless people).

You could make a rule that you need to have lived in the area for over x years already (with and address to prove it) but eventually even that wouldn't work.

No, if your gonna do UBI, you gotta do it country wide pretty much and we are nowhere near implementing something like that. Hard enough to get people to do so many of the shitty jobs right now, if you start giving alternatives or even DON'T give them to everyone, the ones having to do those jobs to get less or the same amount as people gettin gUBI are going to revolt. Nobody gonna work at Mc D's for min wage while their neighbors live better and don't work at all.

rexcrk posted...

Be neat if he actually put that as the poll question so I knew wtf Im voting for.

for some reason this guy puts it at the bottom of the post

These experiments are always designed to fail, and on the off chance they succeed, the results get buried.

wolfy42 posted...

if you start giving alternatives or even DON'T give them to everyone, the ones having to do those jobs to get less or the same amount as people gettin gUBI are going to revolt. Nobody gonna work at Mc D's for min wage while their neighbors live better and don't work at all.

That's the point, people aren't meant to be held captive in their jobs, the employer is meant to give incentive employees actually want.

I think the real problem with this and the other test still comes down to you may not know how people would really act if this became a permanent thing. For example, many people could just up and quit their job, leaving a lot of places without workers at allBut you cant test for that since the people participating in the test most likely wont quit since they know that the test will only last for 24 months. Plus, the extra money from the job might help them, since in this case, its for a specific group of people

This seems to be more of a child support thing than actual UBI. I am very interested in seeing what will happen with a UBI; but I don't think this is it. My vote would be 'I'm interested to see what happens'.

rexcrk posted...

which one? what?

Somebody's alt account can't read

darkmaian23 posted...

These experiments are always designed to fail, and on the off chance they succeed, the results get buried.

There have been plenty that weren't designed to fail and whose results weren't buried. They just get ignored because so much of our society has been so brainwashed by capitalist propaganda that they can't reconcile their beliefs with these experimental results that so completely violate them. Same with housing-first strategies for dealing with homelessness: Many have not only been successful, but seen considerable savings over the costs of dealing with people being homeless, but people just can't wrap their heads around the idea that simply giving people homes could ever possibly work.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

That's the point, people aren't meant to be held captive in their jobs, the employer is meant to give incentive employees actually want.

Indeed. If anything, UBI is the key to true anarcho-capitalism: You don't need to regulate businesses to protect workers if workers have the option to simply not work for businesses that harm them. A few regulations here and there are still a good idea (mostly for safety, in cases where workers can't be expected to understand the true nature of the risks involved or when the public is potentially at risk), but the whole minimum wage issue goes away completely if everyone's already guaranteed a living wage.

Doesn't Alaska already have a quasi ubi system?

if you give someone enough money to actually live on, they won't bother working. no way we are anywhere near having enough things be automated properly

Krazy_Kirby posted...

if you give someone enough money to actually live on, they won't bother working. no way we are anywhere near having enough things be automated properly

People are greedy, people want to buy dumb shit, people want to flex their greater wealth. You can't do that on the government stipend.

streamofthesky posted...

Voting NO, because those programs are the polar opposite of "universal", and end up just being another giant handout to selected groups, on top of any others (which will continue to exist, even though UBI is supposed to replace them).

jfc, that's outrageous. How can they even pretend it's UBI?

streamofthesky posted...

Being just above the income limits, which are still not even close to the upper limits of middle class, is such fucking bullshit.
"Yeah, I make $2,000 more than my neighbor, so the government decided arbitrarily that he should make $10,000 more than me when it's all said and done."

Government in a nutshell.

Gaawa_chan posted...

so I think a federal job guarantee is preferable

While I like the premise, the implementation seems infeasible.

rexcrk posted...

which one? what?

Pionear trolls by not putting his poll question in the poll spot for some fucking reason. He never explained it and just gets confrontational when you ask. Just a weird gimmick, i guess.

adjl posted...

Indeed. If anything, UBI is the key to true anarcho-capitalism: You don't need to regulate businesses to protect workers if workers have the option to simply not work for businesses that harm them. A few regulations here and there are still a good idea (mostly for safety, in cases where workers can't be expected to understand the true nature of the risks involved or when the public is potentially at risk), but the whole minimum wage issue goes away completely if everyone's already guaranteed a living wage.

The problem with UBI is that a lot of jobs and fields aren't sustainable under the system, at which point society loses the ability to support UBI. As such, UBI doesn't work as anarcho-capitalism or any form of capitalism, but it requires the most authoritarian forms of statism to remind functional. Communist systems can get around issues by compelling labor. In the absence of compelled labor, the government would have to control EVERYTHING within the society to promote the jobs that need doing. Otherwise you have low-skill essential work (some of which will vanish due to automation) and high-skill better paying work that's more attractive (which would need to be lower-paying, relatively speaking).

The real issue is that some jobs, unless people really need the money, are going to be appealing to nobody. If wage necessity isn't a thing, the job goes unfilled (unless you compel people to work in some of those roles or the compensation is ludicrously higher).

wolfy42 posted...

Nobody gonna work at Mc D's for min wage while their neighbors live better and don't work at all.

that's the entire fucking point

no one should have to work for minimum wage unless the minimum wage goes to at least 15/h instead of fucking 7/h.

The_Viscount posted...

In the absence of compelled labor, the government would have to control EVERYTHING within the society to promote the jobs that need doing. Otherwise you have low-skill essential work (some of which will vanish due to automation) and high-skill better paying work that's more attractive (which would need to be lower-paying, relatively speaking).

Not really. It means sewer workers would need to be paid much more and accordingly cost of living would spike, which would mean UBI would spike to compensate. The cost of UBI logically would come out of the highest return areas as essential serivces make up a smaller percentage of its profit.

What you end up with is a natural income equalisation that still allows better workers to make more, but doesn't allow exponential return streams to be exponentially more wealthy than everybody else. It's ideal.

Adam_Savage posted...

that's the entire fucking point

no one should have to work for minimum wage unless the minimum wage goes to at least 15/h instead of fucking 7/h.

it's already 15 in CA

The_Viscount posted...

The real issue is that some jobs, unless people really need the money, are going to be appealing to nobody. If wage necessity isn't a thing, the job goes unfilled (unless you compel people to work in some of those roles or the compensation is ludicrously higher).

Translation: "I'm okay with people suffering in miserable jobs without being adequately compensated because the alternative is starvation."

You are correct that garbage collectors would have to be paid a hell of a lot more if the job weren't merely seen as an acceptable alternative to living in miserable squalor. Good. The unpleasantness or outright danger of a job should factor into the wages, instead of this ridiculous, elitist "it's unskilled labour" propaganda that most of the country has bought into to justify treating the workers they depend on like shit. If people need to suffer for our benefit, they should be appropriately compensated. If they can't be, then the system is broken and nobody should be trying to defend it.

Is that sustainable? Maybe, maybe not. Is that a massive incentive to innovate and automate those industries to reduce the amount of human suffering needed (and therefore the amount of compensation necessary to attract people)? Absolutely, and that's a great thing.

adjl posted...

The unpleasantness or outright danger of a job should factor into the wages, instead of this ridiculous, elitist "it's unskilled labour" propaganda that most of the country has bought into to justify treating the workers they depend on like shit.

I don't know about this. it (unpleasantness; ignoring danger here because that's different) already is factored in because if no one would do it at a particular wage, it would pay more than that wage. unskilled jobs don't pay less because we decide they're unskilled and so pay less; it's the fact that they're unskilled that puts them in high demand (puts the workers in high supply), which lowers the wage.

danger is a lot different, but in terms of unpleasantness, the wage should approach exactly what it should be to offset it. the job is worth what you're willing to get paid to do it.

(another thing I'm ignoring/missing is underhanded tactics that businesses use to prevent jobs from being better than they could be, like preventing unions from forming, or making workers work just shy of 40 hours a week to avoid benefits, and that kind of thing.)

Sahuagin posted...

unskilled jobs don't pay less because we decide they're unskilled and so pay less; it's the fact that they're unskilled that puts them in high demand (puts the workers in high supply), which lowers the wage.

Which means the labour market exploits the high supply of workers that need jobs to get away with paying them less than it would take to attract them to the work. That only works because those unpleasant jobs are considered better than starving on the streets. Take away that threat, and the supply goes down and you have to start giving people actual incentives to work the jobs.

pionear posted...

Somebody's alt account can't read

Alt?

The_Viscount posted...

Pionear trolls by not putting his poll question in the poll spot for some fucking reason. He never explained it and just gets confrontational when you ask. Just a weird gimmick, i guess.

Yeah its super braindead lol. And he keeps accusing me of having alts which Ive literally never done.

Dude has some serious issues

adjl posted...

Which means the labour market exploits the high supply of workers that need jobs to get away with paying them less than it would take to attract them to the work.

the workers are a part of the market. the market as a whole is blind and unconscious. no, not "paying them less that it would take to attract them"; paying them exactly what it takes to attract them and not less.

(you have given no basis for saying "exploit" and "less" here when you're responding to me explaining that wage is at an equilibrium. how is it "less than it would take to attract them"? work in this context is by definition something you wouldn't do without getting paid for it.)

adjl posted...

That only works because those unpleasant jobs are considered better than starving on the streets.

no, not "only", or else literally everyone doing those jobs is a hair away from being homeless? no. some people don't mind and some people like doing those jobs. (depends what we're talking about; I recall you mentioning garbage men.) and not every job is necessarily life and death either. some people have jobs for the job experience, or to make some money without it having to be a life-sustaining amount of income.

(I guess I'm hard to convince that a job is bad, as I worked one of the worst possible jobs for almost 15 years. being a garbage man is real job with a medium-low wage, with benefits.)

adjl posted...

Take away that threat, and the supply goes down and you have to start giving people actual incentives to work the jobs.

yes, that the zero-point for income is homelessness and starvation increases demand for jobs (increases supply of workers), which lowers wages. I do agree that it would be nice if we could somehow get rid of that.

I don't see that that would immediately remove low-tier jobs from existing, or make them any different. they would still be low-tier jobs. (ie: whatever the reason is to have a job, those would remain the jobs that almost anyone can get. they would remain the jobs with the highest supply of potential workers.)

your utopian UBI would have to cover a lot of luxuries before there'd stop being an incentive to work basic jobs.

(incidentally I think economic issues like this are often too theoretical. you see on both sides of economic arguments people who just "believe" that the system behaves the way they want it to, without any practical real reason for thinking so.)

Sahuagin posted...

the workers are a part of the market. the market as a whole is blind and unconscious. no, not "paying them less that it would take to attract them"; paying them exactly what it takes to attract them and not less.

You're just describing the flaw of laissez faire Capitalism, not defending it.

Yes, the market is blind and unconscious, which is why it's the job of the government to define boundaries (like minimum wage and human rights) to ensure that nobody is strongarmed in to a bad situation at threat of inhumane conditions.

Sahuagin posted...

yes, that the zero-point for income is homelessness and starvation increases demand for jobs (increases supply of workers), which lowers wages. I do agree that it would be nice if we could somehow get rid of that.

That's what UBI does.

Sahuagin posted...

I don't see that that would immediately remove low-tier jobs from existing, or make them any different. they would still be low-tier jobs. (ie: whatever the reason is to have a job, those would remain the jobs that almost anyone can get. they would remain the jobs with the highest supply of potential workers.)

It incentivises automation (so unfavourable work doesn't have to be done by humans) and promotes better working conditions. Working a job like the bins is a lot less of an issue if you're given say a mask so you don't have to breathe in bin smells, or have access to shower facilities after work so you don't have to go home stinking of waste. Jobs don't have to be unpleasant and if people aren't at threat of homelessness, they won't do those jobs until necessary steps are taken to make them not unpleasant.

Why not give a card to households under a certain income with a monthly limit that they can use for grocery stores/transportation/utilities? Basically give a stipend that will cover basic necessities, just not as a lump sum. It'd help people not spend everything all at once on frivolous things and kind of force them to think about how they're spending. I'd think this would also give people an incentive to work so that their actual work income can be used for "fun" spending.

A lot of people don't like the idea of UBI because they think it'll make people complacent and just leech off of the government. We are definitely going to go that route at some point when most jobs are automated, so we should start experimenting now before it's too late.