[motorest]

> Because you have to live in a society with those other people.

Your reply was a strawman arguments, and fails to address OP's point. The point is quite simple and straight-forward: if your argument for UBI is that people could hypothetically pursue their interests, why should I have to be the one having to work to pay the taxes required to finance this income redistribution scheme only to have others, perhaps less talented and dedicated than me, pursue my interests at my expense?

[wrs]

You would have the option to do what they’re doing if you prefer. You just wouldn’t have as much disposable income.

Why are you pay for other people to use the roads or have their fires put out or have health care? Because society is more pleasant overall if everyone can assume a baseline availability for those things.

[motorest]

> You would have the option to do what they’re doing if you prefer. You just wouldn’t have as much disposable income.

That's fantastic. So let's build upon your personal belief, and as the system is universal then your recommendation is extended to everyone subscribing to the service.

Now please explain how you expect to finance an income redistribution scheme where all participants do not contribute back and instead only expect to consume from it.

[ownagefool]

I think the overriding idea is a UBI would only result in a modest living and luxury would cost more.

That's where many of the practical issues come in of course.

I'm not going to personally argue they're not solvable, but many people will argue the requirements of basic shelter and sustenance being far higher than what they actually are, and in our current system, the landlords would take the cash anyways.

Of course, if we all end up jobless due to robotics and AI enhancement, which again isn't something that's necessarily going to happen, UBI or similar might be the only positive path out of that mess.

[_DeadFred_]

VCs fund a lot of companies, even though they only get a return on a few. The government routinely gives out subsidies to industries they want to encourage, knowing that only a few that receive the subsidies will generate a return. This isn't a novel/unworkable concept, a lot of our economy is currently based off of it actual, you just don't like it.

Some people think if you fund people's ability to live, so that they aren't killing themselves going to multiple jobs, not sleeping, not raising their kids, remove fears like 'insurance is tied to this job so I can't leave it', etc, you will encourage an economic renaissance, just like VC funding has created a renaissance for the pocketbooks of VC funders.

[just_some_guy_2]

Denmark already have a limited form of the UBI when seen in that light. The state offers free education and a monthly "basic income" for people studying for a degree, for up to five years.

Sure, some people waste it. Some are just passive consumers, even shopping around between multiple educations without ever completing a degree. Some drop out half-way. Some get impractical degrees with few real job opportunities.

But enough people go on to become doctors and engineers and software developers and so on, and then have long careers that ultimately pays back the venture capital to the state, in the form of taxes. Most also work a side-job while studying to supplement the "basic income" stipend.

I don't personally believe that the majority of people will become unproductive consumers with an UBI. I think that societal pressure to contribute, the wish to enjoy luxuries, and to get status is enough for the majority to still work. I think that the added safety net of the UBI will also allow more people to take a risk on a dream, and perhaps make it big in art, in inventing new stuff, in science or in politics. And, as in VC investments, the few big hits will hopefully pay for the failures.

[motorest]

> Denmark already have a limited form of the UBI when seen in that light. The state offers free education and a monthly "basic income" for people studying for a degree, for up to five years.

Your example has absolutely nothing to do with UBI, other than the fact that a small minority gets paid a stipend. It's not universal as it's conditionally granted only to a very small subset of society (students) throughout a limited time (5 years). At best it's another social safety net that is granted to people who would otherwise have no access to higher education.

Yet, in your example you already acknowledge that even when granted to a very specific subset of society which is motivated and mobilized to seize that opportunity to fund personal growth, it is also abused in ways that go exactly against it's purpose as it provides perverse incentives that attack equity at it's core.

> I don't personally believe that the majority of people will become unproductive consumers with an UBI. I think that societal pressure to contribute, the wish to enjoy luxuries, and to get status is enough for the majority to still work.

I'm afraid your personal hopes are misguided and based only on wishful thinking. There are plenty of examples in areas such as social housing where benefits are linked with immunity to "societal pressure to contribute". Providing a resource unconditionally represents a clear incentive to eliminate whatever incentives there are to secure it.

[just_some_guy_2]

> I'm afraid your personal hopes are misguided and based only on wishful thinking

Oh, I knew somebody would go there. My personal hopes are at least as valid as the blanket statement that everybody will automatically fall to the lowest denominator and contribute as little as possible given the chance. I'm just honest enough to prefix my predictions with "I believe."

And of course the Danish education stipend is not a real UBI. Nobody has implemented a real ubiquitous and unlimited UBI. But there have been trials, like the one in Finland involving 2000 people over two years. Compared to that, I think the Danish "trial" may be closer to the real thing. It has run since 1970 and involves all students of higher education in the country in that entire time frame.

If I was a researcher trying to figure out what happens if you give a group of people a monthly stipend with very few requirements and no stipulations about how the money are going to be used, then I at least would regard that as valid data.

[motorest]

> VCs fund a lot of companies, even though they only get a return on a few.

You're not talking about long-shot bets in a system where everyone is expected to produce. You're talking about income redistribution schemes. This means today's salary is used to finance today's benefits. Please explain who do you expect to foot the bill when the system pressures those who sustain it to abandon that and instead add to the pool of consumers.

[_DeadFred_]

No, I am talking about investing, not bets, in every person, improving their lot, which in turn will improve society's productivity. If I go from watering 10% of my garden to 100%, I get better returns. A mom working 2 horrible jobs with varying hours can not raise a healthy new member of society. Freeing her to do so lifts ALL of society. There are lots of factors that will improve. People no longer just barely hanging on can start re-investing in themselves, their ideas, their skills. People not afraid if their idea fails will start new businesses. If anything business and capital flow will increase and flourish.

[WorldMaker]

A lot of the "magic" of UBI ideas is the time value of money and a lot of the same fundamental concepts as other forms of passive income. One way to think of it is your Government making a massive investment in "short term loans": your UBI payment is a loan of $X on April 16th with an expectation to pay Y% of $X back on April 15th of the following year (as the taxes you owe on the income you made that year). If Y% is greater than or equal to 100% it is exactly a loan, with interest. If Y% is less than 100% it is a government subsidized loan. A lot of the debate inside UBI discussion is what is the most effective Y%, and a lot of the beliefs about UBI is that you can do it with a surprisingly small Y% for among the same reasons that the Federal Reserve can give 0% loans to most banks. If they can give such favorable terms to short term loans to banks, why can't they give that to average citizens? When you look at all the complex deductions in the existing tax code as existing loans with favorable percent and add them together, that also drops your Y% and potentially simplifies things. (Instead of deducting lots of individual line items, you shift Y% individually, the terms of your personal annual loan agreement. Or you can leave Y% consistent and adjust $X up to replace deductions with larger loans.)

If "everyone" lives on $X - Y% * $X for an entire year the loans are fully repaid each year and the government isn't "losing money" on its "loan terms" and is meeting the subsidies people expect from their government. That's not a "losing" situation. (It's not a likely scenario either, because at least some people are always going to want more than $X - Y% * $X dollars a year for their lifestyle or their dreams or their investments or their philanthropy or their vices.)

(ETA: It's also not directly an assumption in every form of UBI that Y% is less than 100%. There are UBI schools of thought that because of the time value of money, some charged interest is not only possible, but potentially a good idea as an incentive to invest the UBI payment in more than just mortgage/rent/lifestyle, but also something that does appreciate you with interest, such as the opportunity cost of accepting a job or a basic savings account. I tend towards the Y% <= 100% feelings, but I understand the Y% > 100% crowd.)

[eschaton]

The above poster is basically just repeating libertarian “free market cannot fail” talking points, and probably feels terribly aggrieved that they have to pay for other people to use the roads or have their fires put out or have health care too.

In other words, they’ve outed themselves as a Randroid and their opinion on matters of economics and public policy is worth just as much as Ayn Rand’s: Nothing, or even less.

[anigbrowl]

The point is hollow, as is your restatement of it

why should I have to be the one having to work to pay the taxes required

You're not. You are not the only person paying tax. And far more of your tax bill is going toward subsidizing people and industries who are already rolling in money than helping relieve the burden on the poor.

I'm not saying you should pay more tax, you should probably be paying less. But we should reorganize the economy away from rewarding ownership of property as if it were productive economic economy activity in and of itself.

[motorest]

> The point is hollow, as is your restatement of it

No. I'm not sure if you failed to understand the question or you tried to avoid it. My question refers to the core argument involving any economic system: fairness and equity. Why are you trying to avoid touching on the topic?

> You're not. You are not the only person paying tax.

Yes, I am. Everyone is forced to pay taxes, and I am no different. In income redistribution schemes such as UBI you get a chunk of your salary taken straight from your pay check to finance other paychecks. So far this sort of scheme is used to cover salaries representing social safety nets such as pensions, disability, and temporarily for unemployed. UBI radically changes that, as it goes well beyond the role of social safety net and unconditionally extends this to everyone. So now you are faced with a scenario where you have two classes of people: those who sustain the scheme and make it possible, and those who only consume it's resources.

Even if you try to argue there's a net benefit to society, you must face the problem of lack of equity. For instance, how do you justify to people like OP that they should continue working at their jobs so that others can have the privilege of pursuing their personal interests? If you argue that OP is also free to quit his job to pursue his interests then you're advocating for an income redistribution scheme that presssures participants to not contribute to it and instead consume the resources it manages to mobilize.

[CuriousSkeptic]

> income redistribution schemes such as UBI

It’s a common framing, but UBI does not have to be that. Another may be that of a just compensation for giving up access to land.

> Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice

[motorest]

> It’s a common framing, but UBI does not have to be that.

Do you understand your comment is a textbook example of moving the goalpost?

I am not "framing" anything. I am describing to you exactly how a universal basic income scheme works. Even the argument presented by UBI proponents to counter the problems with equity and perverse incentives is that the net benefit comes from eliminating all other types of incentives and the overhead they require to validate and prevent fraud.

> Another may be that of a just compensation for giving up access to land.

I don't think you read the source you're citing. It proposed inheritance tax that funded only a very basic social safety net program that at best covered retirement pensions only to those who outlived life expectancy and only around 1/3 of the income of an average agricultural labourer. That is very far from what any UBI proposal required in terms of the sheer volume of income that has to be redistributed.

So even in your example you are faced with the challenges of math and budgeting. Where does the money come from? Apparently income redistribution and the fundamental problems of equity and fairness is not it, and the alternative you proposed would come very short of even covering a pensioner's basic needs. So where do you think the money comes from?

[CuriousSkeptic]

If you by moving the goalpost mean I'm not that interested in the actual size of an UBI, then yes that is probably fair. The point of my argument is exactly that an UBI does not need to be conceptualized from the perspective of needs but rather from the perspective of rights. As such I do agree that the math may not balance out to an amount that is actually livable. Which I think is a fine outcome.

The point of my source was not so much the economic argument, which, after all, talks about a reality several hundred years ago. Perhaps I should have linked to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism instead, to focus on the moral side of it.

I do think however that a modern take, especially if it turns out that recent AI developments will have sizable impact on the demand for human labor, could very well turn out to result in a dividend that is actually livable. Paine talks about land, but we should really consider all commons: Land, carbon emission rights, patents, copyright, trademark protections, electromagnetic spectrum, ip4 address space, dns names, the list can be made pretty extensive.

Perhaps it should end there. We could establish the idea of cooperatively owned legal entities representing various commons. These entities can collect rent in exchange for allocating parts of the commons to private use. I have a feeling it would make sense to take it a step further though, even if the details are probably over my head at the moment. It's already the case that pension funds function as a cooperative ownership of a part of all capital assets. And then there is home ownership and its connection to loans and wages. There probably will need to be some creative restructuring of this situation.

[jt2190]

I don’t understand your comments about “fairness” in the context of UBI. Doesn’t everyone get the benefit whether they work or don’t? Otherwise that wouldn’t be “universal”, would it?

[motorest]

> I don’t understand your comments about “fairness” in the context of UBI. Doesn’t everyone get the benefit whether they work or don’t? Otherwise that wouldn’t be “universal”, would it?

Your comment would only make sense if somehow you failed to understand the basics of the issue and fooled yourself into believing the system would only feature consumers and there were no producers at all. Everyone receives free money from the state, and thus it's all good. Right?

But think about it for a second. That money that everyone consumed, where do you expect it to come from? Who pays the bill? It's an income redistribution scheme, but whose income is subtracted do that there is money to pay someone else's income?

Once you figure that out, you will them be in a position to actually start thinking about the actual problem of equity and fairness: what incentive is there for anyone to generate the income that others require?

[anigbrowl]

> You're not. You are not the only person paying tax.

Yes, I am.

OK buddy

[Workaccount2]

Because the guy sticking out 60 hours a week at the office to get a comfortable middle class life loves his job just as much as the painter traveling to do his national parks series.

Therefore the government can tax the office worker and use the proceeds to buy the artists paintings and utopia is here!

[pineaux]

Its not a strawman. The argument is: because you need the other people in the society. You need them for basically everything. You have built your life on shoulders of others. Everything you can do, you can do because you profit from other's labour. That is why. You would not have culture, language, computers, roads, garbage collection, nursing homes, music to listen to, etc. You have enjoyed all these things "at the expense" of the people who did that for you.

[motorest]

> Its not a strawman. The argument is: because you need the other people in the society.

No. Your argument is that other people exist. That's great, everyone had the right to exist. But in the meantime, why do you think that just because someone else exists that means I am obliged to work a job to pay off their bills? And if you answer with a puerile and superficial "but you can also quit your job" then who exactly do you expect to foot the bill? Age you envisioning a society where no one contributes to it?

[_DeadFred_]

Society is a perfectly valid response to your question. You are used to a certain society, societal rules that doesn't care about it's people. OP feels like society should be more than that. And simply that thought, that society shouldn't let people die on the street, that mom's should be able to raise their kids not forced to work two jobs, should encourage people to do XYZ, is a totally valid response to your question.

[motorest]

> Society is a perfectly valid response to your question. You are used to a certain society, societal rules that doesn't care about it's people.

No, it's quite the opposite actually: you clearly do not care about society if you see it as an ATM to unconditionally fund your whims and cravings all while rejecting any need to contribute back.

I'm asking s very simple question you are trying to avoid answering: why is it fair for those who actually sacrifice themselves to work to fund those who opt to not work. Explain exactly what is fair in having workers support actual freeloaders in society? I mean, you are not talking about social safety nets. You're talking about unconfitional basic incomes. You do nothing, and you get a salary in return. Explain in clear terms how is it fair to those who actual work to see their labor appropriated by those who choose not to work, which might very well be their own colleagues. Explain where is the fairness and equity in this.

[TFYS]

The fairness comes from the effects that would have on society. Reduced crime, reduced stress, more freedom, more demand for labor, etc. These effects would have positive effects on the economy and that could increase your salary in addition to the other benefits of a safer, fairer society. The happiest countries on earth are the ones that are closest to implementing this kind of thing.

You'd still be getting a lot more than the ones that do nothing. I doubt you'd stop working just because 5% of your income gets given away if the option is to live on 10% of what you're getting by working.

[lan321]

10% isn't covering rent and food for most people, though. Unless we assume that universal income would send the artists into deserted villages to live on bread and salt. I'm quite stingy, and my rent is 15% of my monthly salary, which is above average for a software engineer. Probably another 5% on that for food, and I practically never eat out and usually buy what's on sale. The only way 10% will work is if I move to the sticks or live in someone's closet. And that's not even including smaller costs such as medical, clothing, tech and misc purchases, transportation, etc. At the same time I'm now earning above average and shoving all of it into shares to secure myself a small "universal income" of my own. Give me universal income guaranteed not to get removed over the next 40-50 years, and I'm becoming a NEET.

[_DeadFred_]

Yes actually. I don't think you understand what society is.

Society can make you go to war and die, which is way more unfair. Society can do anything up to and including that.