443
People get out of poverty faster with a guaranteed livable income says Ontario senator
(www.aptnnews.ca)
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
443 points (98.5% liked)
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You'll find that, overall, it's actually the opposite. Healthy people who have all of their basic needs covered feel a big incentive to do productive and valuable work. Sure, there will be the freeloader here and there. But in general, people want to do cool things, even boring or simple things, as long as they feel they are contributing to something good.
Yup. People WANT to work. And some people cannot afford to get jobs. Yes, I'm serious. Work clothes, a place to sleep, a permanent address, identification can all be barriers to employment.
Do people who retire contribute to society more or less than they did before retirement? Pensioners are the closest thing we have to a long-term UBI today.
It's an unfair comparison. A pensioner is someone that by definition already contributed the most they could to the economy. As experience has it, plenty of pensioners continue to work even after retirement.
We have seen experiments with ubi and they almost unanimously conclude that it's a net positive, people tend to find work that both they actually want to work in and have the most skill on. It improves work conditions overall as well. Instead of settling for worse conditions or unfit positions.
Happy people are more efficient and productive. That's a no brainer.
Not really. There are plenty of healthy early retirees. Do they on average contribute more or less than before they retired?
What percentage? How does that compare to what they did before?
Any early retiree is most likely a billionaire, so by definition they weren't even contributing that much to begin with, probably just hoarding generational riches.
My kid's teacher retired at 55. So you think she was a billionaire?
So rich people don't contribute to society because they don't have to work in order to live. However, people under a UBI will be very productive because they don't have to work in order to live?
I'm not engaging anymore, you don't want to learn, you're just constructing weird gotchas for outrage.
Arguably, under a UBI system people will not be pressured into jobs they aren’t good at or hate just because those jobs offer the wage they need to live. Demographically, “female-coded” jobs are undervalued, so I can see how a UBI would help level the playing field there especially.
I can think of many times I’ve wondered why the hell a coworker is doing this job when they suck at it and seem to hate it. I’d love for those people to have the option to just get out without potentially parking themselves and their family at the food bank.
Yep, I've been in that situation. It seems reasonable to imagine that with a UBI some of those people would quit their job. Now, with fewer people working, how do you pay for UBI and everything else? We already have a deficit and inflation.
Retired people can contribute time to their families, the community, and other non-capitalist endeavors. So could one spouse in a single income family, or those that don't need to work for income, but to generate profit every adult is now expected to work and never retire.
Of course, and that's great. But who pays for the UBI? Rich people? And what do we do when we have taken everything from them, or they move overseas?
They will get UBI too so worst case they hit the same floor as everyone else.
But they will never reach that point because taxing the rich will never make them anything other than the richest of the population. They will still be rich, just with a smaller gap between them and everyone else.
As a side note, why are you worried more about the rich than the poor?
I am not. I'm offering the argument that a UBI may well lead to a less productive population, which makes it even harder to maintain a UBI in the first place.
But if there are no longer rich people to be taxed because they have been sucked dry then there is no source to fund the UBI. Hence the notion that "rich people will fund the UBI" doesn't fly. Not to mention that wealthy people find it relatively easy to move to other countries with less taxes.
The UBI is funded by not having 23 different agencies each with their own staff, red tape, and costly vetting processes.
There are more than a few studies already done on UBI and they all conclude it is a benefit. Stop asking everyone else to quench your curiosity and do the work yourself. Or are you currently receiving UBI and don’t want to do any work?
Foh