Current Events > Do you believe in UBI? (Universal Basic Income)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Im not sure if I do. It would make people lazy to work. At the same time.... COVID has taught us that automation for a lot of jobs might come sooner than we think.

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UBI sounds like a medical problem

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Yes.

COVID has shown that it's needed, especially with automation on the way to replace tons of jobs.
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Yes, more freedom to do things and less having to worry about if you may or may not be able to afford something you really need.

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Yes, Andrew Yang rolled out a great model. If 1000 dollars a month is all it takes for you to be lazy, then you probably weren't that productive to begin with, and machines could do a better job anyways. That's one of the main points of UBI, to help with automation.

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Yes. Every citizen should be guaranteed enough money to pay for at least the most basic housing, and food.
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Ivynn posted...

UBI sounds like a medical problem

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I would softly support it as long it isn't implemented in the way that, for example, Andrew Yang sought (i.e. UBI wholly replacing entitlements and social welfare nets), but I mostly see it as a band-aid

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I do not believe that the majority of people, or even a large enough portion to become a problem, would be content to do nothing all day every day if they didn't have to work to live.

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I believe it will be needed at some point in the near future. Maybe now if minimum wage doesnt improve. With increased automation there will be a time when low skilled jobs are not available for all.

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There are some obvious issues with UBI, especially with a country the size of the US (1000$ a month in California doesn't go nearly as far as 1000$ in rural Iowa, and there are absolutely people who will complain about it, but giving different amounts to different regions would be just begging for abuse).

I think its an important idea and something that would be super useful in the future, but there are likely still a few kinks to work out before its good to go (if it will ever)

It'll eventually be a requirement, especially once full automation kicks in.

About as much as I believe in Santa or the Tooth Fairy.

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Its an inevitable necessity.

At some point. People in general do need to stay productive, but a part time job is probably good enough. More part time jobs for everyone would be nice.

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No, but if I was working in an unskilled Lowe tier job, I would pretend to believe in Ubi too.

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All I can say is, regardless of whether or not UBI is feasible, sustainable, or will become necessary, we should pray that it never gets to that point. The reality is that people need to work, if only for our own mental health and sanity. The implications behind nobody needing to work anymore are such that after thousands of years, we as a species have reached the end of our progress, and all further resources would be dedicated to feeding and herding us like really expensive cattle in a civilization has nothing left to do but decay. Law enforcement presence would have to dramatically increase as there would be a lot of people roaming about with too much free time on their hands and a lot of boredom. It's not a pretty picture.

I like the idea of being provided for even in times of uncertainty. That said I do like working for money because it allows me to apply my skills to get something in return that I can use to better my own life so I'm not someone who would want to rely on something like that either.

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yes

it will be necessary

AzNDarkSamurai posted...

Im not sure if I do. It would make people lazy to work. At the same time.... COVID has taught us that automation for a lot of jobs might come sooner than we think.

I think that's the wrong lesson from covid. We had to stay home to flatten the curve because we didn't have the medical resources to treat a full blown outbreak, and with a vaccine a ways off, it seems our medical machine is not as efficient as it might need to be.

UBI is about saying a lot of jobs are becoming obsolete and thinking we should just let people stay home, instead of saying a lot of jobs are becoming obsolete, we need to get people ready for the jobs still here and in demand, or might be needed in the future. I get it's appealing to people that never really aspired to much beyond a cashier level, or truly believe themselves when they say they'd create something great with the off time and not just get high watching TV, but I don't see work going away any time soon. It just takes new forms.

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Yup. Bezos could eliminate poverty in the US and still be the wealthiest man in history.

not now but in the future ya

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Annihilated posted...

All I can say is, regardless of whether or not UBI is feasible, sustainable, or will become necessary, we should pray that it never gets to that point. The reality is that people need to work, if only for our own mental health and sanity. The implications behind nobody needing to work anymore are that after thousands of years, we as a species have reached the end of our progress, and all further resources would be dedicated to feeding and herding us like really expensive cattle in a civilization has nothing left to do but decay. Law enforcement presence would have to dramatically increase as there would be a lot of people roaming about with too much free time on their hands and a lot of boredom. It's not a pretty picture.

Most people will still work, but they won't be forced to labor at a soul sucking job to make ends meet. And the people who can't (disability, etc) won't have to worry about starving or going homeless

Siaperaz posted...

No, but if I was working in an unskilled Lowe tier job, I would pretend to believe in Ubi too.

I make 6 figures and UBI is good

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Annihilated posted...

All I can say is, regardless of whether or not UBI is feasible, sustainable, or will become necessary, we should pray that it never gets to that point. The reality is that people need to work, if only for our own mental health and sanity. The implications behind nobody needing to work anymore are such that after thousands of years, we as a species have reached the end of our progress, and all further resources would be dedicated to feeding and herding us like really expensive cattle in a civilization has nothing left to do but decay. Law enforcement presence would have to dramatically increase as there would be a lot of people roaming about with too much free time on their hands and a lot of boredom. It's not a pretty picture.

You think people with lots of free time and boredom wouldn't try to make something interesting of themselves? I think the 40 hour work week is far more culturally harmful than having more free time.

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One potential area of conflict is undocumented immigrants -- do they qualify for UBI? Also, if they do qualify, how many more people will attempt to enter the country for "free" money?

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Yes but it's nothing more than a pipedream in the US guys dont get your hopes up

el_cheato posted...

You think people with lots of free time and boredom wouldn't try to make something interesting of themselves? I think the 40 hour work week is far more culturally harmful than having more free time.

We've just come off / are still in a period where a lot of people have a lot of free time to start on making something interesting. I hear little of that, and a lot of talk about binging shows and gaining weight.

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Annihilated posted...

All I can say is, regardless of whether or not UBI is feasible, sustainable, or will become necessary, we should pray that it never gets to that point. The reality is that people need to work, if only for our own mental health and sanity. The implications behind nobody needing to work anymore are such that after thousands of years, we as a species have reached the end of our progress, and all further resources would be dedicated to feeding and herding us like really expensive cattle in a civilization has nothing left to do but decay. Law enforcement presence would have to dramatically increase as there would be a lot of people roaming about with too much free time on their hands and a lot of boredom. It's not a pretty picture.

Change isn't always bad and idk why you think is always is.
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I think they should start to implement UBI, and have it structured that in order to be eligible for it you need to work for 20 years. If you want to go backpacking for a year or whatever then your vested service is suspended until you get back into the workforce.

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lightwarrior78 posted...

We've just come off / are still in a period where a lot of people have a lot of free time to start on making something interesting. I hear little of that, and a lot of talk about binging shows and gaining weight.

Because nobody wants to start something they don't have the capital for or when they know they'll have to turn around and go back to work, putting said projects on the back burner or straight up abandoning them

lightwarrior78 posted...

We've just come off / are still in a period where a lot of people have a lot of free time to start on making something interesting. I hear little of that, and a lot of talk about binging shows and gaining weight.

Anecdotal evidence. I've heard just as many people talking about their work on personal projects, and that's with the fear of life-threatening disease looming around every corner that the government is unwilling to admit exists.

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sktgamer_13dude posted...

Change isn't always bad and idk why you think is always is.

He brought up good points, though.

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TeaMilk posted...

Most people will still work, but they won't be forced to labor at a soul sucking job to make ends meet. And the people who can't (disability, etc) won't have to worry about starving or going homeless

I know that in the near future most people will still work, I'm talking about the final endgame scenario where jobs as a source of income are no longer viable.

el_cheato posted...

You think people with lots of free time and boredom wouldn't try to make something interesting of themselves? I think the 40 hour work week is far more culturally harmful than having more free time.

A lot of people would do that sure, but believe me there are more than a handful of people who would like nothing more than to just make trouble. An example, about a month ago during the quarantine I came home from work to find about a dozen cop cars completely blocking the parking lot to my apartment. I had to park outside and walk all the way down, and from their conversations with bystanders I found out that they had just chased a guy driving a stolen car until he hit somebody's Mustang about 100 yards from my door. There may or may not have gunshots, I'm not sure if they were talking about at that incident or just in the area in general. The cop was saying that with the quarantine going on there were a lot of kids just getting into trouble and that's why they were out in the neighborhood a lot. I mean, we've had lots of government assistance and fewer jobs for only a couple of months, and look what happened. The country literally burst into flames.

Annihilated posted...

I know that in the near future most people will still work, I'm talking about the final endgame scenario where jobs as a source of income are no longer viable.

A lot of people would do that sure, but believe me there are more than a handful of people who would like nothing more than to just make trouble. An example, about a month ago during the quarantine I came home from work to find about a dozen cop cars completely blocking the parking lot to my apartment. I had to park outside and walk all the way down, and from their conversations with bystanders I found out that they had just chased a guy driving a stolen car until he hit somebody's Mustang about 100 yards from my door. There may or may not have gunshots, I'm not sure if they were talking about at that incident or just in the area in general. The cop was saying that with the quarantine going on there were a lot of kids just getting into trouble and that's why they were out in the neighborhood a lot. I mean, we've had lots of government assistance and fewer jobs for only a couple of months, and look what happened. The country literally burst into flames.

Are we supposed to deny freedom to everybody because of the few that abuse it?

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Solid Sonic posted...

He brought up good points, though.

No he didn't.

All he did was fear monger that people will just sit around be lazy and that people *need* to work. This *need* to work is ingrained in our heads as Americans and the *need* for the 40-hour work week when in all actuality, that might not be the best. Workers in America don't have the same amount of vacation time that other countries get and they also tend to work longer hours on top of that, considering other countries moving to a lower work week. People tend to forget your brain needs time to itself for good mental health and having a UBI would allow people to take more time for themselves because they don't *need* to work all 40 of those hours a week.

Yeah, some people might leech off the system and that's obviously not good, but it's also not going to be such a significant amount that people are going to just start wandering aimlessly around cities like he thinks is going to happen.

Again; change isn't bad in all scenarios and a UBI would be a welcome change.

Annihilated posted...

The country literally burst into flames.

Yeah, it was just the quarantine that made the powder keg go off. Totally nothing else happened this year that made the powder keg go off and made America truly angry.
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MachineJaipur posted...

Because nobody wants to start something they don't have the capital for or when they know they'll have to turn around and go back to work, putting said projects on the back burner or straight up abandoning them

Something I've learned from people: if they make excuses about why they aren't doing something now, they'll be making excuses about why they aren't doing it later.

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el_cheato posted...

Are we supposed to deny freedom to everybody because of the few that abuse it?

The freedom to do what exactly? Drive stolen cars and throw burning trash cans at store windows? Have you ever heard of the phrase "this is why we can't have nice things?"

karlpilkington4 posted...

Yes, Andrew Yang rolled out a great model. If 1000 dollars a month is all it takes for you to be lazy, then you probably weren't that productive to begin with, and machines could do a better job anyways. That's one of the main points of UBI, to help with automation.

This

$1000 a month per person isn't going to be enough to keep people out of work. If anything it'll maybe make people stop working two jobs, meaning more jobs will be available for other people.

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I guess $1000 is low enough to where it wouldn't hurt a lot, although would I also be paying more in taxes at the end of the year on any money I do make?

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Rexdragon125 posted...

Yup. Bezos could eliminate poverty in the US and still be the wealthiest man in history.

how are grown adults this bad at math

yes ubi.

what better way to serve the market than to supplement everyone with more money.

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Tired-Insomniac posted...

This

$1000 a month per person isn't going to be enough to keep people out of work. If anything it'll maybe make people stop working two jobs, meaning more jobs will be available for other people.

This is why to some extent I support basic income as a "supplemental" service, except I know that eventually it will become corrupted into something like "BASIC income means LIVING income" just like minimum wage has. And no amount of money will ever be enough to placate everyone. It'll either be too much in low cost of living states or too little in expensive ones.

For once, just once, I'd like to see some statistics on people getting too lazy to work from a UBI.

I know welfare queens are a thing, sure, but how many examples are there of people who stop working without medical reason, just to collect? What % of the potential working populace does that, or is projected to do that?

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Annihilated posted...

The freedom to do what exactly? Drive stolen cars and throw burning trash cans at store windows? Have you ever heard of the phrase "this is why we can't have nice things?"

Time to oneself. Not having to worry about making rent. Not having to worry about being able to eat. Freedom to travel. Freedom to actually form communities now that you're not stuck in a stale office for more than half of your waking hours. Freedom to make art without having to worry about monetizing it. Freedom to be bad at things.
Do you really have no concept of a life outside of work?

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I'm someone who would want to see UBI but I'm concerned about the knock-on effect it may have.

To me it sort of seems like insurance (that is the more people who pay in the better your premium becomes) so if everyone is entitled to a monthly payout of $1000, doesn't that increase the burden on those paying into the system to keep it afloat?

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Solid Sonic posted...

I guess $1000 is low enough to where it wouldn't hurt a lot, although would I also be paying more in taxes at the end of the year on any money I do make?

Honestly Id be willing to pay higher taxes if it goes to good causes like helping Americans have a safety net no matter what happens

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We will probably need it in the future when automation is more rampant. But I dont believe we need it now. We need to increase the minimum wage.

I'm not against tax increases either if I feel like it's beneficial. I think what concerns me more is increased costs of living that accompany those taxes because of what has to change in order to make it work. If you're paying more taxes AND just getting by day to day becomes more costly then it's an unsustainable equilibrium.

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I like how the only arguments against UBI are schoolyard insults (jealous, lazy, etc)

el_cheato posted...

Time to oneself. Not having to worry about making rent. Not having to worry about being able to eat. Freedom to travel. Freedom to actually form communities now that you're not stuck in a stale office for more than half of your waking hours. Freedom to make art without having to worry about monetizing it. Freedom to be bad at things.
Do you really have no concept of a life outside of work?

As I've said, people have been working in one form or another since the dawn of man. It's in our blood. Hunting, farming, building, fishing, trading, delivering, researching, educating, there has always been something for people to do that improves their own survival as well as the survival of others. Having nothing but leisure time does not make most people happy. Look at how many famous actors and rich people are always getting into failed marriages, legal troubles, and suicides. Studies have shown that people in poorer countries than the U.S. are also happier than people in the U.S., which would not be the case if money were the reason for happiness.