[Newsbot]

Title: Universal basic income seems to improve employment and well-being
Category: Economics
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2020-05-08 06:24:22

[llama66]

I wonder if COVID will be the catalyst for an implementation of UBI.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

I'm curious about the article because according to Finland's official stats in an article I read several months ago about it, UBI was scrapped because the stats simply didn't bear out the theory behind UBI.

The people of Switzerland, one of the more progressive countries out there, categorically rejected UBI as the bad idea they know it is.

UBI today, as far as I'm concerned, is an attempt by left-wing parties to gain permanent "democratic" rule. Give people free money for nothing and they'll probably find it hard to not re-elect you for fear of the tap being turned off. Some might call it 'vote buying'.

[herbie]

Oh yeah... the corporate masters will just hike prices and take it all away.
Anyone else noticing massive increases in gas prices just as lockdown is being loosened and summer starts? What a fucking coincidence, eh?

[Thanos]

I imagine Scandinavia and Germany will lead the way in officially implement it within our lifetimes. They're just wired that way, without much of an urge in them to toss everyone else under the bus in order for the tiniest of minorities to get insanely wealthy at the expense of the entire society. What a bunch of weirdos, eh?

It'll never happen in the US, ever, because if the 1% built everything they have WITH THEIR OWN BARE HANDS AND NO HELP FROM ANYONE ELSE then the average Joe America can goddamn do it all on their own too. Canada? Who knows? Won't happen anytime soon though, maybe by the end of the century.

[BeaverFever]

Ontario was originally part of this study, but once Ford was elected he immediately killed it, I guess because he didn’t want any inconvenient facts to emerge. It would be interesting to see the outcomes of UBI over the longer term, especially at different benefit amounts. A UBI of say $200 per month isn’t going to be the same as $1,200 per month for example. And how do you prevent employers from clawing it back with lower wages?

[Thanos]

It'll have to be taken more seriously if it's shown that the emergency CERB payments have been instrumental in keeping the economic decline from COVID being that much worse if everyone had been left to sink or swim on their own. The spending on necessities is one thing but if it can be proven that using any extra leftover from a CERB payment for other expenditures helped stores or car repair garages stay afloat then the argument for a UBI is won right there.

All spending by individuals is good for the economy, no matter what it's spent on, just from the generated sales taxes alone. Magnify that even further with keeping businesses open just by spending in them, and keeping those jobs at those places safe, and it becomes even clearer. The problem coming up is the obvious one though. The fiscal "conservatives" are going to be foaming at the mouth for massive austerity to be implemented everywhere because OH MY GOD WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO ABOUT THE DEFICIT/DEBT. If they win with that kind of argument then the recession/depression will get even worse and end up killing more jobs & businesses than the COVID lockdown has.

This is what pisses me off the most, how horribly "normal" everything is going to return to far faster than anyone wants to believe. And that included the rapid return to the failed economic policies of the recent past, the ones that sucked all the money upwards and left average people in peril and the infrastructure in decline. It's maddening because this is a moment that doesn't come along very often, with an opportunity to discuss what the economy even is and how to restructure it to benefit the most instead of the few. This is where not having a FDR or even a JFK in charge in the US really hurts. Aside from Bernie no one else even had the guts to bring up what needs to be done to correct the vast inequities. If the US had a leader with that kind of visions then the rest of the Western nations would quickly follow suit because economic and fiscal trends that begin in America, whether for good or bad, rapidly replicate themselves elsewhere. With the current American mentality obviously being a big "fuck you" to anything like UBI the idea could die in the crib except for countries like, as I already mentioned, Germany or Scandinavia where they have communitarian values bred into their very bones in a way other wealthy countries simply don't understand.

[DrCaleb]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

UBI today, as far as I'm concerned, is an attempt by left-wing parties to gain permanent "democratic" rule. Give people free money for nothing and they'll probably find it hard to not re-elect you for fear of the tap being turned off. Some might call it 'vote buying'.

No, it's a reaction to manufacturing jobs moving to lower wage countries, and the ones that don't move becoming automated.

Those people still need income from somewhere, and no one really knows where.

I'm more on the 'retrain them' side of things.

[Robair]

[herbie]

EI, CPP, OAP, Worker's Comp, Children & Families, Welfare, Disability Pensions, etc.
Umpteen agencies with their own bureaucracies doing basically the same thing.
Seems the argument against a UBI is more or less the same one used against Public Health in the USA.
The freedumb to choose your inefficiency.

[DrCaleb]

^^ It would definitely eliminate a lot of bureaucracy.

[Robair]

Yup. Thought it was a stupid hippie concept until I checked out Andrew Yang.

Smart dude. Makes a lot of sense.

[Zipperfish]

The other thing is that robots will be responsible for so much of the productivity in a decade or two, there just won't be as much work to go around. As Gates sez, tax the robots, use that for your UBI.

[DrCaleb]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

The other thing is that robots will be responsible for so much of the productivity in a decade or two, there just won't be as much work to go around.

It's actually been the trend in the economy that automation replaces the tedious tasks that people don't want. It ends up making more knowledge work than it removes manufacturing work.

The problem is people could make a good living at that manufacturing, and you can't make a good living any more in the service industry that people migrate to.

[Robair]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

The other thing is that robots will be responsible for so much of the productivity in a decade or two, there just won't be as much work to go around.

It's actually been the trend in the economy that automation replaces the tedious tasks that people don't want. It ends up making more knowledge work than it removes manufacturing work.

That doesn't sound right to me at all.

Amazon, for example, replaced how many small shop jobs with it's automated warehouses?

Next mass job extinction is truck drivers. The number one profession in the U.S.

These autonomous trucks will need programmers, but not full time to drive them. More of a one and done, then your heavy duty mechanic will be trained on the diagnostic stuff. I don't see a net job creation.