It turns out that most people aren’t as lazy as you think they are. Yes, people take the path of least resistance. But with nothing to do, people will become restless and need to do something. The pandemic has shown that most people become restless during an enforced lock down to some degree.
Make the isolation even more drastic and people will literally shock themselves just to get some stimulation.
This interesting article shows why people who say that people who have their needs provided for will do nothing are generally wrong. If people are doing nothing, there’s a reason for it that’s not a natural state.
I’ve heard this a lot, following Andrew Yang’s campaign. I don’t know where you live or why people around you are so tied to the place that they can’t move, but in many places, rents actually went down during the pandemic.
San Francisco’s year over year decline in rent prices in Oct. 2020 was 20.7% In NY, it was 15%. SF Chronicle
If people aren’t tied to a place for their jobs because they’re working remotely and they have a minimum income coming in, they’ll move away from the priciest places and move toward the less pricey places. That depresses rent values.
If people can work remotely, they can pool their UBI money together and buy some property so they won’t have to pay a landlord. Let’s say the UBI is $1K. If 3 people got together, they can buy a place with a $3K mortgage which could be big enough for all of them if they go to a place that doesn’t have the highest property values in the country. Over time, they can use the equity to find other places.
Wow, they were shocking themselves after fifteen minutes? I thought I was bad at meditation.
I was perhaps a little flip with my football and cheap beer comment but the point was, people not worried about starving to death in a gutter will spend time doing what they love to do whether it’s chasing stock prices as a day trader, making art, or watching Judge Judy. I might feel a little sorry for the last group but if that what they want to do, more power to 'em.
And, yes, Oredigger, without UHC $1,000 a month would be untenable.
I certainly wouldn’t. If other people are getting UBI in addition to their current incomes, I would expect mine to be, too. Not to mention that $1000 UBI would be less than my social security cheques.
I used to live in a semi-rural, unincorporated part of my Indiana county. They sure as hell DID enforce building codes in my area. I worked several years in construction and with a general contractor so I have some personal knowledge of this.
You’re taking what’s normal in your area and projecting it everywhere. Sorry, your situation is not universal.
Didn’t say it was universal. My point was that if instead of funding a housing grant that would require my spending a lot of money/time on permits/inspections the govt should just pay UBI and I could then use that money and not need to waste it on bureaucracy. This was an example of a benefit that UBI could provide. This sort of scenario plays out in a lot ways so that ultimately just about everyone would benefit.
I think you’re getting too far in the weeds here. If for no other reason then there are lots of reasons for the government to not want your house to burn down that have nothing to do with our social safety net.
UBi should replace every other form of our government safety net (excepting healthcare) so all of the programs we use to provide goods and services targets at the poor will be able to be removed. Which is why we’ll get rid of social security it’s there to make sure grammy isn’t eating cat food in her old age instead we’ll cut her a check and call it UBI.
What part of granny paid into Social Security all her life and she is now drawing on that don’t you get? I’m not being given something, something of mine is being returned to me. If you want to to send a UBI check as well, fine. Keep those grubby hands off my money. It’s bad enough that somebody else has had the use of it for 50 some years.
About 75% or more live off the govt, that’s between SS, social services and govt employees. The 25% that isn’t is mostly getting screwed. They don’t have the income or healthcare that the govt dependent crowd has. UBI doesn’t take anything away from those that have govt funding but makes it fairer for those that don’t.
If you replace SS with the UBI you should also replace govt pensions as well.
There is not a secret bank account with the money you paid every week stacking up, to be mailed to you when you retire. You can’t will your SS to someone else when you die. Sure, a widow/widower or underage children might benefit, but you can’t leave your benefit to your best friend or charity the way you can with your own money. Some people (the disabled) may never pay a dime into SS and yet receive benefits. Some people live longer than expected and get more in benefit than they ever paid in - it’s not like you reach the end of “what you paid in” and then you’re cut off.
If you get SS then YES, YOU ARE RECEIVING A GOVERNMENT BENEFIT. Just like people receiving VA healthcare or unemployment insurance payments or Medicare or food stamps or a mortgage tax deduction.
If the situation wasn’t so damn serious I’d laugh myself silly every time some pensioner with a mortgage tax deduction claims they are completely independent and don’t rely on the damned government for anything. Unless you in the middle of a wilderness in a cabin you built with your own hands and live a subsistence lifestyle you do, in fact, rely on and benefit from government.
Yes it is BippityBoppityBoo’s money being returned to him. Social Security is principally a government mandated pension scheme. Americans pay into Social Security for decades with the understanding that when they retire, they’ll start receiving payments from that pension.
People stating that a US UBI would replace Social Security are essentially stating that the prior payments into Social Security would be valueless. An 18 year old who had never made a payment into Social Security would receive the same pension as someone who had paid into it for 50 years. My bet is that most of those Social Security recipients would feel like they’d been royally screwed over.
If the new UBI exceeds their current SS allotment they may not be unhappy with that. It all depends on the UBI, doesn’t it?
And so sorry if someone doesn’t get back every penny they paid into SS - like I said, you can’t will it someone like a bank account. Plenty of people have paid into it who never collected, and plenty collect who never paid in. The fact that the SS tax is a separate line doesn’t erase that it is still a tax, we just don’t call it that because it would upset the middle-class and wealthy voters.
So sorry, no, it is not YOUR money being “refunded” to you when you collect SS. It is the current money being collected off the current taxable workers that is being sent to you. YOUR money was sent the retirees back when you were working and paying that tax. I’m sure when it first started there were cries of “UNFAIR!” because people who had never paid in were collecting from day one. And if it ever ends (which, despite the doom-crying, I suspect it won’t) then the no, the last folks who paid in won’t get any benefit from it.
It’s a government benefit paid through taxes. It’s not a super-special secret savings account in your name. And yes, there is always a risk that it might end, you might not get any money out of it, or a reduced amount compared to what you were expecting. That’s why it’s sort of important to vote for a government that seeks to preserve this benefit rather than one seeking to eliminate, slash, or privatize it.
Your money doesn’t exist in social security you were sold a lie. The only way social security works is if the young people are paying into the system. Sorry your money kept your parents from eating cat food. Hopefully that makes you feel good. If people today stopped paying into social security “your money” will be dried up in a year. Then you have two choices make young people pay into a system that they will never see a return from or stop paying old people with ss and give them UBI.
Lots of pensions work exactly how you’re describing. That’s one of the reasons private companies have been moving away from them for decades. Someone works for a private company for 28 years and dies before the 30 year eligibility? Unless there’s a provision for early death in the pension agreement, their family is out of luck. Someone else dying 5 years into retirement while another person lasts 25 years? Nothing uncommon about that. The only real difference with US Social Security pensions is that the pension fund is held by the US government instead of a separate management agency, and instead of investing it in low-risk securities, the government is basing future payments on future income.
To bring the discussion back to UBI, the equivalent would be if a new employee was entitled to start receiving a pension on their first day of work, and keep receiving it if they quit the same day, and they’d be receiving the same pension as someone who worked for the company for 40 years. Don’t you think the retiree who’d been with the company for 40 years might be a bit miffed at that arrangement?
The OP has the assumption that almost all the people who would receive UBI would still want to work because they’d want a level on income higher that required to meet their basic needs. While I agree that the majority of people would, I think the number of people who would stay at home and mess about while receiving a free paycheque is higher than he thinks. UBI is never going to work if there’s a significant perception that a productive class is supporting a bunch of scroungers. Just putting Social Security recipients into the same category as the scroungers is going to create a huge amount of resentment. Telling them that all of those past payments into Social Security that they made - well that was bad timing and neo-liberalism has retconned those into a plain old tax? I think that would create resentment by the bucketload.
There is a genuine phenomenon of handing out jobs to otherwise unemployed people, which are—not necessarily strictly useless, although they could be—but spending all day picking up litter on the beach is not going to support the economy or train someone in technical skills.
Resentment of “scroungers” or lack thereof depends on the spin doctors. Are your taxes supporting a class of oxygen thieves or a universal social net that benefits everyone including potentially yourself?
I want to clarify that a lot of what people are arguing about isn’t strictly about UBI. It’s about how UBI is implemented and what it will replace.
Under Andrew Yang’s plan in 2020, UBI would have been over and above Social Security and opt-in for people on other forms of welfare. If their welfare was more than the UBI, they could keep it, but they’d have to continue qualifying for it.
For some people, it could be worth it to get the $1K/mo free and clear without any administrative hurdles.
The goal would be to reduce the benefits administration but over a period of time as more people opt-out of the system.
Inflation is affected by how the UBI would be funded, and that’s a rather long and more complex discussion.