UBI support Poll

[The Grand Nudger]

Our government distributes a vast amount of our money to preferred recipients through outright corruption and legalized bribery. All the while there’s this push to run it “like a business”.

Fine. Businesses have shareholders who get dividends and people who reach into the till to shower their friends with cash get fired. People who do not pay their service costs do not get service.

There’s enough money in bog standard waste, fraud, and abuse to abolish poverty in the United States. We would lose nothing by using those funds that way, as they’re -already- being stolen from us.

[Angrboda]

I think capitalism is at odds with a UBI. I'm not sure how to settle that conflict.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why would it be? In what way does a ubi interfere with the private ownership of trade and industry? How would it interfere with for profit enterprise?

For the low price of eradicating oligarchy we could increase the free flow of capital between producers and consumers. With a ubi conceived as stakeholder profit we could likely eliminate many social services and welfare contracts. The grain industry might get gutted, I guess?

[Belacqua]

There might be incentives other than financial ones. 

I've seen that when people say that someone is "successful," they usually mean he's made a lot of money. But there are other kinds of success too. There are other ways to be at the top.

Additionally, I don't imagine that a UBI would be sufficient to get yourself a private island and a Lamborghini, so people who are motivated by that kind of thing would still want more cash.

So a high school kid going to a trade school and learning a trade would be a waste of money since this person would have the same income as a doctor?

No I never said anything like that.

[h4ym4n]

So a high school kid going to a trade school and learning a trade would be a waste of money since this person would have the same income as a doctor?

No I never said anything like that.

So help me understand UBI

[Belacqua]

No I never said anything like that.

So help me understand UBI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income

It's an income. An income that is basic. 

It's enough to live on. It's not a top limit on what you can earn. If you want to earn more, you can do the kind of job in which you earn more. There is no requirement that everyone in the country has to have the same income. The UBI is a floor beneath which you cannot be impoverished.  

Some people want to be rich, or do the kind of job that makes a lot of money.

[h4ym4n]

So similar to a minimum wage like in the US?

Is that an income if you work or not?

[Belacqua]

So similar to a minimum wage like in the US?

Is that an income if you work or not?

There are various versions. None has been established in a whole country, though there have been various pilot programs. 

Usually it's conceived of as a no-strings-attached payment, whether you work or not. It just ensures that no one can go completely broke. 

Artists or poets who are willing to live on the basic income wouldn't starve. People who want more can continue to have a career, just as people do now. I'm no expert, but some people have calculated that it would be cheaper for a country to do it this way, rather than set up help programs for those who have hit rock bottom. 

Personally I think it would free people up to try new things or exercise talents that don't pay. So for example if you wanted to start a new business you'd know that failure wouldn't be catastrophic. 

And just in terms of "what kind of society do we want to live in?" I think it would be better to spend money to keep people secure than on, say, endless war. 

You've probably heard this quote from Steven Jay Gould:

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” 

I think we'd all benefit if people's talents have a better chance of being exercised.

[h4ym4n]

Where does all this extra money come from to pay nonworking people?

[Belacqua]

Where does all this extra money come from to pay nonworking people?

We could start requiring corporations to pay taxes. Or take a fraction of the Pentagon's budget. 

The US has enough money. 

But I admit it's a utopian scheme. There's no way that, realistically, we can expect Washington to reorient itself away from war towards a secure peace.