[agilebyte]

I think it is not just about moving goalposts.

What is different is that it frees you from the worry that you need to eat and have an abode. And the hope is that this comfort will make you engage in work you really want to do, rather then turn you into a couch potato.

[PaulJoslin]

The idea is nice, but if it causes widespread increases in costs / consumer goods / rent due to the reasons I mentioned, then the only places you may be able to just stay at home and work may not be the place you want to be.

For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, everyone who was to only accept the basic income amount would no longer be able to afford to live in London and would have to relocate to less desirable places in the country.

Yes, you would now be free to work on your projects from your own home, but you would now not live where you want, with the people you are friends with, in an area which would be full of people who also are only taking the basic wage and probably a pretty horrible place.

The on paper calculations of the affect of this is like a snapshot of some code, before you press run. In the first state it is in, it would be fine, but the economic effects from this over the long term both in social and financial terms would be profound.

[ricardobeat]

So everyone that wants to live in London will need to have a job, just like they have today. It's a decent trade-off.

[PaulJoslin]

That is incorrect, London is not like that today. London is an extremely multi cultural city, with both rich and poor living side by side in the same boroughs. A lot of people argue that most of London's unique culture in places like Brixton came from the poor and that's what made London in a lot of ways great.

If you say, everyone in London will need a job, then you are then moving the poor / unemployed on mass out of the city. On paper this may look great, but for social-economic reasons this is a disaster.

You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.

[agilebyte]

Hmm, London still needs the services of those poor that you speak of. If people are willing to pay the exorbitant prices for having a home there, I don't see why they can't be prepared to pay more to get the basic services running.

The further London moves away from the UK, the more are cities like Brighton, Cambridge etc. looking more attractive. More attractive to people willing to live in a more mixed area too.

[JonnieCache]

Come to brighton! We have a nice little tech hub style arrangement going on, it just lacks a fancy silicon-related name because it isn't built on billions in government funding.

BTW,

>You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.

This is already happening/has already happened, unfortunately.

[agilebyte]

I used to live in Brighton, Hove actually. Lovely.

[kristiandupont]

London is turning into a ghetto for the rich just like most major cities as it is today. Which is really sad, I agree, but I don't see how this concept would change that in one way or another.

[nawitus]

>For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, everyone who was to only accept the basic income amount would no longer be able to afford to live in London and would have to relocate to less desirable places in the country.

Some models call for a universal income which takes location inconsideration. The income would be higher in London, for example. That's a pretty controversial model, though.

[judk]

That's obviously nonsensical. All the basic income would be sucked up by rising rents, raising cost of living, go to step 1. Basic income should be set up to pressure people to live where it is cheaper.

In any monopoly/duoploy/oligopoly/cartel-ish environment in which prices are determined by limited supply and therefore buyers ability to pay (seller gets the economic profit) makes buyer side cash infusion useless.

[nawitus]

>All the basic income would be sucked up by rising rents, raising cost of living, go to step 1.

Why wouldn't that happen everywhere?

[randomdata]

Supply and demand.

If we assume people prefer to live in a major city, and incomes are adjusted so that your income matches your cost of living, there is no downside to living there. That puts upward pressure on an area that is probably already maxed out for living space, which causes people to pay a little bit more in order to secure a place to live. Then, your income rises to offset your new costs of living there, providing the money necessary to allow someone to pay just a little bit more than you, thus beginning the cycle.

Outside of the city you would find a low demand and high supply of housing under such a scenario, and thus there would be no fuel to ignite a race to out-pay each other to find a place to rent. In fact, there you could probably convince the owner to accept a little bit less for rent as few people are interested in the place at all. If your offer is not accepted, it might sit vacant.

[nawitus]

Note that income can be adjusted even if it doesn't exactly match the cost of living. For example, if living in the capital is 25% more expensive basic income could be 15% more in the capital. That might allow a lot of people to live in the capital with basic income. I don't know how that affects your scenario.

[lgieron]

In my region, there are a lot of able-bodied man in their forties and fifties who, thanks to the state policy, are already retired. The sad fact is that, due to a ton of free time that's suddenly appeared in their lives, a lot of them have become drunks.

I fear that for every person doing something meaningful with the freedom given to them via basic income, there'll be 10 or 20 who become couch poatoes or worse, self-destruct (booze, drugs, gambling) out of boredom.

[chongli]

I fear that for every person doing something meaningful with the freedom given to them via basic income, there'll be 10 or 20 who become couch poatoes or worse, self-destruct (booze, drugs, gambling) out of boredom.

Do you realize what you're saying here? That people should be forced into wage slavery to keep them from becoming lazy or alcoholic or drug addicts. That's an incredibly regressive position to take.

Basic income should be given to all. This gives everyone more freedom. If people have mental health problems including substance abuse, they should be given treatment.

Throughout the history of human civilizations we have stood on the shoulders of giants. We have built ourselves up from nothing and all of that progress has been measured by our ability to reduce our dependence on a subsistence lifestyle, freeing people to innovate and create great works of cultural or artistic importance. Now we are finally nearing the end of this long road. We are finally approaching complete freedom from labour as a survival necessity. And now people are complaining that this is a bad thing?

[handzhiev]

"That people should be forced into wage slavery to keep them from becoming lazy or alcoholic or drug addicts."

No. People should be forced to do something useful, because the goods don't come out of the blue. This is not the same as "wage slavery".

[agilebyte]

What if goods are produced by automation and where we cannot automate we have people that want to work. What kind of task would you give to all the other people?

Edit: I am alluding to the fact that we are way past full employment.

[handzhiev]

I don't think we have past full employment. We are not even close to it, at all. I'll give you several entirely random but real examples. The street here needs new paving. There is no public transport in our town and no taxi after 6PM (need drivers and support staff). I need someone to fix my roof, and it's hard to find good one. There is a need of better trains, better cars, better software, better technologies, more original movies, better restaurants... And someone to check my teeth more frequently (zero good dentists in town). I have tons of work in my backyard as well. There are loads and loads of work to do, and it's all work which can't be automated. Work is not something that will ever finish unless of course we want to stop progress.

[chongli]

And yet we have tens of thousands of people bloating up government at all levels with what are essentially "make-work" jobs. Likewise for universities and colleges which are bloated with administrators and other non-essential staff. Our economy is absolutely filled with redundancy for the simple reason that people need to work in order to pay the bills.

[gnaritas]

> I fear

Well there's your problem, fear is not the proper state of mind with which to make good decisions.

[agilebyte]

If it were 1:10-20 then these people would have already voted in basic income platforms into government.

I also suspect that a lot of these guys have been trained for manual work that is, regardless of basic income, being moved overseas and automated. The work is going/gone.

Edit: Also, I would highly respect any manual labourer who would stay in their job even though they were sure of their income. I think that is a useful currency too.

[scotty79]

They turn into drunks not beacuse they have too much free time and money. It's because they were raise in a culture that said that a man is only worth as much as his job. Now they feel worthless and self-destruct. They also are too old to use modern entertainment. With internet, electronics and wide variety of recreational consumer goods hardly anyone should have become drunk to not be bored.