This is hard to respond to without resorting to cultural reductionism, but there are many societies in which economic advancement beyond the means of a comfortable middle class life is not highly valued by everyone.
Australians talk about the "tall poppy syndrome" -- that there is an Australian cultural tendency to cut down anyone who has been very successful.
In developing economies in general you often have a lot of people who have just gotten out of absolute poverty -- in a few generations their descendants may think differently, but they are often grateful enough that they can feed themselves and advancement beyond that is a pretty distant concern.
Then there is the Japanese proverb that "the nail which sticks out will be hammered down" -- the meaning is nuanced but is meant to convey that envy is an outcome of success and caution people against being ambitious or nonconformist.
These are all reasons why UBI might encourage some people not to work. And while these lines of thinking may be stronger in certain cultures than others, inevitably there will be some people thinking like this in any culture. Those people probably just won't work.
> This is hard to respond to without resorting to cultural reductionism, but there are many societies in which economic advancement beyond the means of a comfortable middle class life is not highly valued by everyone.
A UBI that is economically viable, even internally in a developed country, in the near term would struggle to replace more than some subset of existing poverty support programs with something with less perverse incentives (particularly, by reducing the disincentive to additional income -- and the incentive for any additional income to be "off the books" income -- for those on the poverty support programs.)
We're a long way from anything like being able to support a "comfortable middle class life" (even if by that, you actually mean something like a middle income lifestyle in a typical developed nation, which is more working class than middle class.)
> In developing economies in general you often have a lot of people who have just gotten out of absolute poverty -- in a few generations their descendants may think differently, but they are often grateful enough that they can feed themselves and advancement beyond that is a pretty distant concern.
Even in developed nations, it will be a few generations before a UBI that can supply "a comfortably middle class life" would be viable.
> "tall poppy syndrome" ... "the nail which sticks out will be hammered down"
Awesome to know that. We have same thing in Poland. Not sure if there's any proverb or a saying. There was a joke that in hell you don't need to watch a boiling tar cauldron full of Poles. If any of them tries to get away others will hold him down.
I guess that's a human thing then. Funny that USA doesn't have that.
Oh, they do. When someone manages to claw their way out of dirt poverty, they ended up cutting off contact with their poor relative and former friends so that they don't have to give all their newfound wealth away.
That's bit different. What I'm saying is that in other places than USA you as a rich, self made, person, you would expect people to be distrustful of you, gossiping, trying their best to make your life harder. You wouldn't expect them to try to exploit you to the point of driving you away.
The only idea I can think of that expresses same sentiment in USA culture is keying someone's car. Not exploitation. Just general malice with only being better of as the reason for it.
The same in Bulgaria and still few people realise that this exact saying about the boiling tar cauldron is pretty common in many nations across the world.
Nothing new. A "comfortable middle class lifestyle" 300 years ago was probably that of a craftsman, farmer or petty merchant. Their comforts extended to a roof over their heads, usually enough food to eat, and probably being warm enough in winter. "Poverty" meant literally freezing or starving to death in a gutter.
Nowadays, "comfortable middle class lifestyle" means a 40 hour work week, and gets you a nice 4+ bedroom house with hot and cold running water, two indoor toilets, heating and air conditioning, 2+ motor vehicles, bigass television, internet, mobile phone, nice clothes, as much food as you can eat, and spare money and leisure to go on regular holidays. "Poverty" (for most of the world) is about on par with "middle class" 300 years ago. Working lots of hours, usually enough to eat, usually warm enough.
In a hundred years, "poverty" will probably mean "only has enough compute power allocated to simulate one virtual environment at a time", whereas "comfortable middle class" will be having your own actual cloud palace with stadium-sized holodeck.
They already do, to a large extent. I guess the OP should define what a comfortable middle-class lifestyle really is. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say: capacity to buy a decent house and car, pay off present and future debt and stay out of it, enough disposable income to meet life's necessities and yet have enough left over to save for a comparable lifestyle during retirement.
I don't think the UBI would provide all of that; instead it would be a means to avoid destitution (e.g. starvation, homelessness, unmet medical needs etc.) in the present. For all the luxuries that most of the middle-class hopes to achieve (luxury car, nice house, investments, vacations abroad etc) you would need more money than UBI.
Australians talk about the "tall poppy syndrome" -- that there is an Australian cultural tendency to cut down anyone who has been very successful.
In developing economies in general you often have a lot of people who have just gotten out of absolute poverty -- in a few generations their descendants may think differently, but they are often grateful enough that they can feed themselves and advancement beyond that is a pretty distant concern.
Then there is the Japanese proverb that "the nail which sticks out will be hammered down" -- the meaning is nuanced but is meant to convey that envy is an outcome of success and caution people against being ambitious or nonconformist.
These are all reasons why UBI might encourage some people not to work. And while these lines of thinking may be stronger in certain cultures than others, inevitably there will be some people thinking like this in any culture. Those people probably just won't work.