Universal basic income and what it may look like

[porkpiesinthepark]

I've been thinking for a while about the criticism of UBI and I think it's due to people not being able to imagine the government trying to 'match' peoples wages. In my opinion, it never will but there will be alternatives to what we have now, which will be able to offer something better.

So say the UBI is £1000 a month for a single person.
We could change the housing market to allow much more public housing with rents set at an affordable level, much more stability, no private landlords and the option to customise/ change your home. Let's face it, home ownership is out of reach for the majority at present. I don't find people are dying to own their own homes but desperate to be out of the instability of the private rental market, out of parents houses, out of house shares etc. If you could offer the next best thing to owning your own house, I think people would go for it.
There would be much more community linked to people having extra time due to not working or not working as many hours. Now, not having enough to do in the day is bad but most people have these huge dreams for retirement and this would just allow them to do some of these things now instead. Also more volunteering, looking after elderly relatives etc.
I don't think that private car ownership would be a thing. There would be a big system like Uber who you could call rides on. There would be a cheaper option, say if ten people wanted to go to the city centre at the same time, they would have to walk to a hub and then the van would pick everyone up, like public transport but based on demand. It would be a status symbol to be able to call a car out just for you.
I think a lot more people would wfh getting the cost of transport and childcare down. Schools might even go remote, as there wouldn't be both parents working and so in theory they could help facilitate the lessons. Then teachers would have small classes of Sen kids like mine, key workers and vulnerable children. Kids would interact with others through volunteering groups with parents, or just playing out as there would be less cars and more parents around to keep an eye on them.
People will either hate this vision as it's so different to what we have now. Or they will like some parts. But what we have now can't continue.

If that was true why doesn’t that happen with the ‘safety net’ of benefits today. We have more unproductive out of work people today than ever before. Handing out free money never, ever helps social mobility. It creates an underclass.

Wrong.

As soon as it’s cheaper for a machine to do your job, the government will bring in more immigrants. What do you think has been happening for the last 25 years. Exactly this.

Machines cost upfront investment. And as long as there are poorer countries out there, the supply of cheap labour is never ending.

From where? A global population collapse is happening over the same period we're discussing everywhere outside subsaharan Africa, the seeds are sewn already. Where are you going to get immigrants from who are not also elderly?

Turn on the news this morning and hear about the nursing brain drain from Africa. There are 8 billion people on the planet and less than 10% of those live in Europe. No shortage of workers in the developing world.

And by the way, the AI soundbite is not the big reveal it’s made out to be. We have had Industrial revolutions before and the same is said every time. This is nothing new.

Turn on the news this morning and hear about the nursing brain drain from Africa. There are 8 billion people on the planet and less than 10% of those live in Europe. No shortage of workers in the developing world.

Right now, yes. But in every country outside subsaharan Africa there are not enough children already: again population decline accelerates, once birthrate falls. It is baked in already.

www.birthgap.org/spaces/10215679/page

There are lots of people because the ageing population is masking the lack of children.

I haven’t read much on it at all but I did hear someone talk about AI doing coding for 12p a day rather than the human labour cost and at that rate you do lose rafts of staff.

The public ownership that I think has come up in pp, it would be good for funding but not sure how it would happen. Setting up new things is risky and investment takes the risk. Do the government do this?

Or maybe we need to ensure tax on profit. How likely is that? Where are companies setting up, is it different to now ior will various countries do well as they do now from tech

Lastly on humans not needing to work. On the optimistic end we have the idea they’ll do art, create new things or they’ll be half asleep on tik tok or whatever (or even worse drugs)

Looking around I’m not sure we can rely on the nicer optimistic version, or we get ghettos of inactivity

If there are no jobs, the useful people will be the young, fit and fertile, and a few experts - no idea what areas but obviously people who understand AI could be handy. One can only hope that governments have a plan to support the rest of the population, it looks quite grim if not.

I don't think you (And a fair few others) understand the concept at all.

Very very basically:

Everyone gets a basic income that is enough to reasonably live on (not like out of work benefits now which are calculated to be barely enough to punish people into going to work).

Everyone is also free to earn extra money by going to work if they want to.

The models I have seen explained do offer an extra sum to those who cannot work due to disability/long term illness.

So AI Coder gets her UBI and she gets her wage for going to work each day.

Stacey sat on her fat arse at home just gets her UBI.

There would undoubtedly be people who sit on their arses at home, but currently those people who do not want to work, are insufficiently intelligent/motivated/educated to be employable... are actually costing the taxpayer more money on being chased into work, sanctioned for whatever, getting into debts they cannot pay, than it would cost to just give them enough to live on and leave them alone.

And for all the 'sitting on their arses' people, there will be a similar number of 'can work a bit but not enough to fulfill current benefits criteria/earning requirements' who WOULD do something if they had the freedom and security to do it.

If people had the freedom to work part time, volunteer, try out starting up a business or self employment without the threat of losing everything, the economy would be better off.

If people had enough to live on, spending is likely to go up - good for the economy.

If people are not scrabbling to survive, then zero hours contracts and shitty toxic work environments and attitudes will be a thing of the past. Employers will have to work hard to get employees, we won't have people doing meaningless jobs and mega layers of management, things will be streamlined because labour will not be cheap.

We might see a return to more manufacturing, more 'lifestyle' jobs (because people can take a break from it, its not so precarious with the back up of the UBI), industry the UK has lost over the last 100 years, that it now needs due to Brexit.

Benefits aren't a safety net.

If you've never been on them it might seem that way, but the truth is they are shackles more than safety nets.

The systems are too complicated, few people know what they can and can't do, and even if they do, the systems fail them and so you earn a bit more one week, you lose out the next, errors are hard to fix. Even where they would on paper, work, the reality is the complexity and lack of understanding in how they work puts people off trying, as failure is a really big deal!

Starting out on many benefits, you are pushed into debt straight away, with things paid in arrears, delays of over a month and in many cases much more than that creating further debt. People living day to day who cannot save and in any case, saving is punished if you do it successfully.

For anyone attempting to be self employed, you're effectively asked to step out of the plane before you've checked that the parachute is strapped on properly or that you're at the right altitude - and once you have jumped, its difficult to abort mission!

The part I don't understand is how anyone thinks in the UK we'd tolerate someone spending the whole lot on drugs, gambling, cosmetics, a pony (insert something you disapprove your money being spent on) when the UBI would come from taxpayers' money and people would be free to earn income from work on top.

I used to work in a charitable area where some of it was publicly funded and the flak we used to get for spending grant money (not even taxpayers' money) on the purposes for which it had been granted, was unreal...

So take teachers for example. A profession in which there is already a shortage, why would a teacher work FT when they could simply work half the week and not have a pay cut? In fact why would they not leave altogether and top up their 1600 with a low stress job elsewhere? Why would a carer work full time for a low wage if they didn't need to. You seem to be drastically overestimating how much people want to or enjoy work. I am pretty well paid but I would quite happily drop my hours if the state was going to sub my pay. The problem is, I work in a role where there is already a shortage of workers so that's not really going to have a positive impact on society.

They'd have to pay a proper wage - is the answer.

The whole working world would have to change, which would be a good thing (but is also the reason it will never really happen!).

People would need to be treated better, there'd need to be more perks than simply being paid - training, health care packages, flexibility in working hours. It would have to be a really radical shake up compared to how things work now.

People also go to work for a change of scenery, something to do, people to talk to, to feel good - if they were paid properly and treated well this would be a much bigger factor.

More people would want to drop their hours, but then more people would also be willing to work part time rather than not at all.

Employers would need to work much harder to make working for them an attractive option, but then they would get a much more loyal, skilled and enthusiastic work force, they'd see far fewer incidences of long term sickness too, with a workforce that is not overworked, over stressed and under paid!

Agree.

What is a proper wage?
Pareto proves that the output of the workforce is NOT equal.
Unfortunately, this means the wage distribution is shared equally across the workforce regardless of output.

Absolutely. People not living in fear of being unable to make the ends meet can only be a good thing.

But I don't want more money. if I wanted more money I would keep working FT and pocket the extra 1600 on top. You assert that if lots of people acted as I would and just dropped their hours then there would be a load of people who currently don't work at all who would want to make up these hours despite the fact that they are currently not working for whatever reason. What makes you think these people will suddenly want to start working when they haven't previously?

There are lots of people who don't work at all because their capacity for work is low, and many employers will not entertain the part time hours they want/need.

With a shift in expectation from 'full time good, more than full time better', to 'do the amount that suits you', and the freedom to do this without being penalised via benefits and complicated and untrustworthy benefits mechanics, the potential workforce widens.

Lots of people DO want more money, but also lots of people would work even if they didn't have to.

I will admit, I am biased towards 'will work even though I don't have to', as thats me - I don't HAVE to work, on paper I am not fit for work and I am unemployable. But for my mental health, I do have to work I can't not and I enjoy the things I do, I'd still do them if I were a billionaire! I cannot be the only one!

But what would people do if they didn't have to work so many hours - would they spend more time with their kids, volunteer, travel, spend more money - those would all be good things. Even hobbies, those still end up generating jobs and money for someone, somewhere.

Asking again, because no one has yet been able to explain.

When you give people free money, it causes inflation of everyday goods and assets. How will it work UBI causes inflation and no one can afford to live on that money? Will they get benefits? How is that different to how it works now?

It doesn't cause inflation if productivity gains match the money supply. The technological revolution coming means productivity will rise. That is how you raise living standards sustainably without inflation. The question is how to tax and distribute those gains when little human labour is required: the link between work and resources (money) will need to largely be severed.

The reason we have inflation now is because there have been zero productivity gains pretty much for 15 years, while money supply has expanded. Therefore demand outstrips supply. Therefore inflation.

That is how you raise living standards sustainably without inflation

To clarify, I don't mean there will be no inflation. Rather that with productivity rising it is possible for real-terms income/ wealth to rise above the level of inflation. The opposite of what is happening right now.

Why do you think other countries in Europe can have higher GDP per capita than us and lower inflation? It is because their productivity is higher.

in the near future, what would happen is that inequality/poverty would become so acute that the vast majority of people would not be able to pay for rent/mortgage and essentials using money generated from their labour. In a sense imagine a country where 80-90% of people live the same kind of lives that UC claimants currently live. This would be the result of AI as well as the rich buying up the assets. I have colleagues where the interest on their savings alone can pay his London mortgage (so wealth generates more wealth), so you can imagine how the truly rich can completely outprice anyone on a vaguely ordinary wage or who don't have the means to generate wealth for whatever reason

A very small segment of elite employees as well as people who own the assets would be responsible for the majority of consumption. Thus hyperinflation wouldn't happen as the UBI in itself would not be able to support overspending. We don't think paying benefits to low income earners and the disabled would cause the price of supermarket essentials to increase so I don't see how UBI does either.

I think of UBI as benefits but in a world where the majority of the population is poor so would be necessary in order to prevent mass destitution. If we tax the technology as well as the capital of the top 0.01% as well as land value tax, we could generate enough money to pay UBI to the 85% of population. I expect middle earners would pay tax on UBI so would not see most of it, similar to how child benefit works.

I think people don't understand the situation MAY be that you will not have a choice, even if you want to work. There will not be a choice of employment. Thus, the chickens of capitalism come home to roost. You wanted faster, cheaper, less human error, you got it.