[_andromeda_]

Are you arguing against basic human nature? For the vast majority of people, if they don't have to work in order to earn, most people will choose not to work. So then who supports these folks? The people who put in actual graft. But the question is, for how long? Is this sustainable.

This is a mindset and it must be fought against vehemently. You want to help people? Advocate for the following:

- hard work as opposed to indolence

- savings culture as opposed to consumption of capital goods

- innovation/engagement as opposed to being dullards

- celebrating and rewarding achievement based on genuine merit as opposed to cuddling our young ones

- skill acquisition by reading books as opposed to watching TV and partying

You want a utopia but none of the sacrifice required to attain it. That's not going to work.

[DanBC]

> For the vast majority of people, if they don't have to work in order to earn, most people will choose not to work. So then who supports these folks?

Those people are already being supported with fantastically expensive bureaucratic benefit systems. Sometimes those systems also act as a disincentive to return to work, trapping people on benefits, by making it impossible for them to get education or work experience or part time work.

Once you have these massive bureaucracies they sustain themselves by land-grabbing more work.

Here's one example from the UK. A man claiming benefits gets temporary work on a zero hour contract. He needs to sign off benefits, so he calls (because that how you do things now) the helpline.

"Is this position going to last longer than 5 weeks?"

He has no idea. But they will only take a yes or no answer.

He is unable to convey that he has no idea whether the job will last for more than 5 weeks or not.

For people who don't know the system it's tempting to just say "it doesn't matter, just take her suggestion and move on to the next question", but sadly the penalty for getting a question wrong (even if you've used their suggested answer) is that you have your benefits suspended or sanctioned.

> celebrating and rewarding achievement based on genuine merit as opposed to cuddling our young ones

You should reward effort, not necessarily achievement. Note that this is different to "cuddling our young ones". This is apparently especially important for smart children.

[notahacker]

The cost of maintaining the "fantastically expensive" massive bureaucracies pales in comparison with the cost of paying a livable basic income to everyone.

The DWP's administration costs are 3.6% (FOI request: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/what_percentage_of_th...) and only about 1.5-3% of the population is claiming Job Seekers' Allowance at any one time. The proportion of people voluntarily economically inactive and neither claiming any benefit nor paying income tax is much larger[1]. Eliminating the "job seeker" requirement is obviously going to cost orders of magnitude more even if there's no resulting change in behaviour.

One can criticise the nature of the bureaucracies and weaknesses in the way they handle people getting back into work, but the idea sometimes floated by UBI supporters that they're more expensive than just handing out more cash is flatly and unequivocally wrong.

[1]this is true even after accounting for recipients of sickness benefits. You could save a bit in some areas by eliminating all sickness and housing benefits over the BI payment level, but that's probably hurting quite a few vulnerable people...

[_andromeda_]

>You should reward effort, not necessarily achievement. Note that this is different to "cuddling our young ones".

It is to a degree a question of semantics seeing as though we're mostly on the same page on most issues. However, I'll still indulge you; sustained effort often leads to achievement. I find achievement to be the best metric to measure effort, otherwise how do you know there's real effort if a given problem is not ultimately solved?

>Here's one example from the UK. A man claiming benefits gets temporary work on a zero hour contract. He needs to sign off benefits, so he calls (because that how you do things now) the helpline.

I personally know of a man in the UK who has an arrangement with his employer to receive payments in cash only. This thereby allows him to still claim unemployment benefits from the government. The employer benefits by not paying PAYE taxes and the employee benefits by earning from two income streams putting him fiscally at par with people who have much higher qualifications than he does.

You can see the sort of rot and inefficiencies that occur when systems such as these are adopted.

[DanBC]

> It is to a degree a question of semantics seeing as though we're mostly on the same page on most issues. However, I'll still indulge you; sustained effort often leads to achievement. I find achievement to be the best metric to measure effort, otherwise how do you know there's real effort if a given problem is not ultimately solved?

HN is full of smart people who through their school life were rewarded for their achievement, not effort, and who got a rude awakening when they went to college and discovered that they were not the smartest in the room, and that the work was hard, and that they were ill-prepared for that hard work.

> I personally know of a man in the UK who has an arrangement with his employer to receive payments in cash only. This thereby allows him to still claim unemployment benefits from the government. The employer benefits by not paying PAYE taxes and the employee benefits by earning from two income streams putting him fiscally at par with people who have much higher qualifications than he does.

But that's the point. HMRC have a bunch of people employed to detect that abuse; DWP people have a bunch of people employed to detect that; local councils have a bunch of people employed to detect that.

We can eliminate fraud, and the expensive fraud detection systems, by telling people it's allowed and expected that they work in addition to their UBI.

[DanBC]

FRUSTRATINGLY I forgot to include the link to the YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KwQTsO7Kok

He wants to stop claiming benefit; he wants to declare work. His answer doesn't fit into their checkbox, and so a simple question takes 7 minutes.

[wav-part]

> Those people are already being supported with fantastically expensive bureaucratic benefit systems.

You are basically saying: We already have bad socialism so lets try good socialism. UBI is as bad if not worst. Distorted market will be least of our worries.

I am in favour of guranteed, no-string-attached food & shalter.

[aninhumer]

So distorting the market by giving people money and letting them decide what they want is bad, but distorting the market by buying/producing arbitrary food and shelter for people is good?

[wav-part]

No its lot less worse than UBI. I should point out that the Govt part would be minimal. Food & Shelter should be provided by multiple private entities under contract from Govt.

If you want to eliminate Food & Shelter Welfare as well, you would not hear any objection from me.

[_andromeda_]

No objections here too.

[thenomad]

Why on earth would I or anyone advocate for either of the extremes you're proposing here?

Acquiring skills is valuable (not just by reading books - there are lots of ways to acquire skills; yes, including watching TV) but relaxing is also valuable. Partying is valuable.

And it's fun, too.

Likewise, rewarding achievement is a good idea, but so is comforting your son if he's upset that he performed badly at something he tried hard at.

And I'm assuming we're all reasonably familiar with the idea that neither 100% hard work (120+ hour weeks, 52 weeks of the year) nor 100% indolence are great ideas?

[tlb]

Can you define "graft", as you use it here? The common definition is "the obtaining of money or advantage through the dishonest use of power and influence" [0], but that doesn't seem like what you mean.

[0] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/graft

[_andromeda_]

Sorry, I'm a speaker of the Queen's English:

British Slang. work; labor.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/graft

[jholman]

That's not the Queen's English, HRH speaks RP.

[_andromeda_]

It was tongue in cheek my friend. Thanks for nugget of knowledge though; I didn't know about received pronunciation.

Edit:

Tangentially, I happen to speak 3 languages and English is not my native language.