Universal Basic Income

[Davkaus]

I would certainly like a lot of money for doing absolutely nothing. I'd be able to spend my time doing things I enjoy instead of selling my labour, such as masturbating, arguing on the internet, and drinking. 

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Put it another way.

When AI and ‘bots do 97% of the jobs, who’s gonna buy shit, if we don’t get given a UBI?

Unless they can persuade the robots and drones to sit at home and shop on Amazon, they need us to have access to money.

This is what I keep coming back to. Replace all the jobs, save bucket loads of expenses, have no customers.  It makes no economic sense to have mass unemployment because you need people to milk for cash. 

[villakram]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Put it another way.

When AI and ‘bots do 97% of the jobs, who’s gonna buy shit, if we don’t get given a UBI?

Unless they can persuade the robots and drones to sit at home and shop on Amazon, they need us to have access to money.

A large amount of wealth in the economy as currently constructed is generated by the moving of money from A-->B, through D, E & F, with C starting up a derivative business on the side with G, H, I, J & K. 

Circle-jerks are our future.

[chrisp65]

12 minutes ago, villakram said:

A large amount of wealth in the economy as currently constructed is generated by the moving of money from A-->B, through D, E & F, with C starting up a derivative business on the side with G, H, I, J & K. 

Circle-jerks are our future.

It is all a circle jerk, we buy booze, fall over, need a nurse, the nurse gets paid, buys booze, falls over...

The whole economy is a drawn out version of barter, people buy my drawings of rooms, they give me cash, I buy their records and bread.

UBI is coming, we have a genuine break in the cycle coming. this isn’t some Luddite shaking his fist at the moon because there’s a new way of weaving. There’s a new way of raising sheep, treating wool, weaving, making jumpers, selling jumpers, delivering jumpers.

I’ve got a friend (no, really) that’s currently trying to set up a bank (no, really) and he’s convinced UBI is coming and he’s got a brain the size of a car park. 

[Shomin Geki]

6 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

It is all a circle jerk, we buy booze, fall over, need a nurse, the nurse gets paid, buys booze, falls over...

The whole economy is a drawn out version of barter, people buy my drawings of rooms, they give me cash, I buy their records and bread.

UBI is coming, we have a genuine break in the cycle coming. this isn’t some Luddite shaking his fist at the moon because there’s a new way of weaving. There’s a new way of raising sheep, treating wool, weaving, making jumpers, selling jumpers, delivering jumpers.

I’ve got a friend (no, really) that’s currently trying to set up a bank (no, really) and he’s convinced UBI is coming and he’s got a brain the size of a car park. 

I'm very far from a Man of Science so this could be nonsense, but Carl Sagan is associated with the phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and it's this aphorism that plays on my mind when considering UBI.  The phrase isn't perfect, the hypothesis of UBI so totalising and so subject to endless contingencies that it's difficult to not approach it speculatively, but I hope you see what I mean. 

Having read the stirring but somewhat wishful-seeming polemic by Rutger Bregman and a handful of articles, it DOES sound very appealing.  But the hesitations of the naysayers do also give me pause.  The criticisms, beyond anything too crude or dismissive, would appear, to this layman at least, to require serious consideration.  I could elaborate if required, to the best of my limited ability, but they mostly revolve around UBI creating (or furthering) subsequent asymmetries in society, say between those who are more functional or connected and those that aren't, that could create ripple effects that the hands-off idealism of the UBI state may struggle to address.  I mean, I'm broadly for it, or at the very least optimistically curious, and obviously further trials and explorations can only do good.

I would love, if you have the time and inclination, to hear more of your friend's thoughts.  An intelligent chap with a vested interest in how this pans out sounds like the ideal source!  I'm particularly intrigued by the neutral phrasing that 'UBI is coming'.  Does that mean that he thinks it's application is an inevitability, or is he also an enthusiast for it?  Does he see problems with UBI, in theory or in practice, or does he consider the proposition one of those 'least worst option' situations?

[chrisp65]

So, speaking from what I recollect (and probably selectively choose to remember depending on what chimes in with my thinking), he doesn’t think that chasing the multi nationals with huge grants and pay offs is a sustainable way of trying to create a future.

Look at the most recent examples, just in South Wales of current government intervention to bring in jobs and create wealth or growth or skills within the population. We have spent, locally, about £20 Million persuading Aston Martin to set up here, we’ve then spent about another £10 Million covering their initial set up losses. They got to a point in early 2020 where they employed nearly 700 people. Now they are laying off 200. So we have spent £30 Million creating 500 jobs. Except it now turns out ‘we’ have also underwritten the rent on the land and have signed to pick up the bill for the next 25 years should Aston Martin disappear or simply choose to relocate because Cornwall or Bracknell have offered them more cash.

LG were gifted £131 Million to create 6,000 jobs. They created less than half that, and closed 6 years later.

£113 Million to build a new ‘super hangar’ to service jet aircraft. Never used.

Technium, £100 Million, they eventually built an enterprise park of business units.

But that’s not a one off, we have a long and proud record of paying companies tens of millions and then not quite landing the utopia we thought we’d bought. From gearbox factories in Bridgend, digger factories in Merthyr, aluminium smelters, an airport, even a nuclear power station on Ynys Mon. Billions spent in total in the hope an industry will stick and kick start an economic recovery. So clearly the money is there. A population of 3 million spending hundreds of millions trying to attract business that hop around the world looking for governments that are spending to attract business.

Why not spend that money on an educated, healthy, content workforce, with spending power. Would that be any less attractive to the next ‘real’ Indian steel magnate, Ineos, or Flybe? Because the current system appears to mostly attract unsustainable business that needed a prop up, and chancers.

At the very least, if we give everyone a living wage, they can support the High Street and we can go back to being a nation of shop keepers and micro breweries.

 

[icouldtelltheworld]

Lots of UBI-related articles in the Economist in the moment, it does seem to have moved from being a fairly utopian idea to something which is increasingly mainstream, with a massive growth in public approval. I'm agnostic on the idea - I think it could definitely have benefits, but obviously not if it was used as a means to remove tradtional state provided social policies (in areas such as health, education etc.). One of the things that's really interesting is that UBI means very different things to those from the left and right, but across the political spectrum it seems there's a growing consensus that 20th century welfare states aren't sufficient for the modern world, so I really wouldn't be surprised if some form of universal payment was introduced over the next few decades - as with other things, the past year has accelerated trends and changes that were already under way and forced us to reconsider the way society is structured.

Some interesting results from a UBI-type trial in Stockton, California:

 

Quote

One participant, Kent, said he was able to risk quitting his old job for an internship, which led to better-paid full-time work, only thanks to “knowing that I have that money” from the scheme. Other benefits were harder to quantify. “I’m able to read and write my poetry, and spend time with my Mom,” reported another participant, Nicole. A third, Pam, said that anxiety associated with caring for her young family had lessened to the point where she no longer needed to take medication.

The Stockton experiment is not the only instance of guaranteed income in America. Other cities are considering launching their own pilots, and are currently discussing the parameters through a group called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. Alaska has long paid a dividend to all state residents, funded by its oil revenues. A large study focused exclusively on new mothers and their children, called Baby’s First Years, is running nationwide right now. One thousand new mothers were recruited to the study between May 2018 and June 2019, to receive either $333 or $20 a month for the first 40 months of their child’s life.

Article here:

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/03/11/a-californian-experiment-in-the-provision-of-guaranteed-income-returns-its-first-results

 

[villakram]

The real changes are related to our understanding of economics. Do deficits really matter and what should money cost? See Japan and global economies since the 2008 crisis. Read up on MMT.

[chrisp65]

 

 

UBI as a mechanism to save the planet?

[blandy]

On 18/03/2021 at 10:32, icouldtelltheworld said:

Lots of UBI-related articles in the Economist in the moment, it does seem to have moved from being a fairly utopian idea to something which is increasingly mainstream, with a massive growth in public approval.

To quote the article you linked “It turns out that people like receiving free money”

I know a trial, almost by definition, isn’t going to be universal, but studies like the Finnish one or the one mentioned here, where 125 less well off people got given 500 dollars are going to confirm that giving people free money, as they phrase it, brings (ahem) benefit to those people.

And I know politicians will latch onto a thing people like - such as the prospect of “free money”. But I kind of think that if you asked those politicians to answer this question “ you have a choice of 2 plans: either a genuinely universal income for everyone, or additional money for those who need it, with the rest [of what’s left] being spent on NHS, transport and local facilities” and if they were honest, I think they’d say the second option. If they didn’t, I’d have an opinion of them which would lead me to vote for someone else. I don’t remotely see the problem that needs solving to be “there’s not enough money”. I see it as “a section of society hasn’t got enough money, and another section has more than they could ever need and is getting ever more distantly wealthy because of deliberate government action and deliberate inaction, often for personal benefit of one sort or another (our donors love a tax haven and a blind eye! and my post politics career could be with them).

Fix the broken spokes on the wheel, don’t invent a square wheel to replace the wobbly round one.

[icouldtelltheworld]

15 hours ago, blandy said:

To quote the article you linked “It turns out that people like receiving free money”

I know a trial, almost by definition, isn’t going to be universal, but studies like the Finnish one or the one mentioned here, where 125 less well off people got given 500 dollars are going to confirm that giving people free money, as they phrase it, brings (ahem) benefit to those people.

And I know politicians will latch onto a thing people like - such as the prospect of “free money”. But I kind of think that if you asked those politicians to answer this question “ you have a choice of 2 plans: either a genuinely universal income for everyone, or additional money for those who need it, with the rest [of what’s left] being spent on NHS, transport and local facilities” and if they were honest, I think they’d say the second option. If they didn’t, I’d have an opinion of them which would lead me to vote for someone else. I don’t remotely see the problem that needs solving to be “there’s not enough money”. I see it as “a section of society hasn’t got enough money, and another section has more than they could ever need and is getting ever more distantly wealthy because of deliberate government action and deliberate inaction, often for personal benefit of one sort or another (our donors love a tax haven and a blind eye! and my post politics career could be with them).

Fix the broken spokes on the wheel, don’t invent a square wheel to replace the wobbly round one.

Absolutely - there's lots that I agree with here, and as I stated in my earlier post I'm not sold on UBI and am open to persuasion one way or the other. However, we do draw some different conclusions here.

It's no suprise to anyone that people like the idea of free money (who wouldn't?) But that's a very simplistic statement which doesn't tell anything like the whole story behind the rise in public approval for UBI-type policies. Another article in the Economist last year stated that public support for UBI in America has grown from 25% to 66% in a very short period of time.

Quote

Mr Yang points out that the approval rating for UBI was only about 25% when he began his presidential run, but by the time he ended it, in February, it was 66%.

Now, bearing in mind the imperfect nature of opinion polls, that's clearly a statistically significant rise. Are we to believe that 75% of people didn't like the idea of free money, but have now changed their minds, or is something else going on? In my view, as with so many of aspects of life, covid has shone a light on the social security safety net in this country and others, and there are clearly aspects of it that are unfit for the realities of the 21st century.

The welfare state was created in the 1940s by a government committed to Keynesian economics and the pursuit of full employment. That world no longer exists, it hasn't done for over 50 years now, and yet the only real changes to the welfare system have been to make it more punitive for those who end up needing to rely on it.

I think we all agree that more should be done to collect tax from the super-rich, and that those funds would be best used investing in public services. Improvements to healthcare, transport and facilities would do lots of good in attacking the multidimensional impacts of a life lived in relative poverty, not least the stark gulf in life expectancy between rich and poor. However, what it wouldn't address is the fundametal inequlity between those who own/inherit capital and those who don't, and their respective abilities to weather the more insidious aspects of modern capitalism. We live in a world where the labour market is increasingly flexible, but the benefits of that have been entirely felt by the bosses at the expense of workers, and whilst those who can rely on the bank of mom and dad can play the game, those without that option have an almost insurmountable hill to climb. People become trapped in low-skill, low-pay work as the welfare system would punish them for making themselves intentionally unemployed if they left their jobs to better themselves.

As a milennial, this is the reality for many of my friends - they could do much better for themselves and ultimately be of more use to society, but are trapped in minimum wage jobs and private rented accomodation. There would be no support for them if they decided to re-train, and they'd be homeless within three months either way. It's stories like the one from the story I originally quoted that make me think there's merit in some form of guaranteed income policy, where the participant was able to take on an unpaid internship which ultimately led to a better paid job (and presumably a boost in wellbeing too).

Can we deal with all the complexities of the modern world, and address the gaping power dyanmics at play within the labour market by making small tweaks to a system put in place the best part of a century ago? I'm very sceptical if I'm honest, which is why I made the statement that I wouldn't be surpised to see some form of guaranteed income scheme (universal or otherwise) come to pass over the next few decades. Even something like a time-limited guaranteed income scheme for those looking to re-train or set up their own business would IMO be a very popular and sensible policy option for any government - and is exactly the type of thing Labour should explore, allowing for a reforming of the welfare state in order to better reflect the reality of the modern world and to better support people's aspirations.

Edited March 20, 2021 by icouldtelltheworld

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

something like a time-limited guaranteed income scheme for those looking to re-train or set up their own business would IMO be a very popular and sensible policy option for any government - and should be exactly the type of thing Labour should explore, allowing for a reforming of the welfare state in order to better reflect the reality of the modern world and to better support people's aspirations.

Yes, I agree. I’m not saying I’ve thought in depth about that particular idea, but radical change is needed, for sure. Aiming help, support, incentives etc where it’s needed is much preferable to me than the Universal “solutions”, none of which are without humongous downsides

[meregreen]

The danger of minimum wage, universal basic income. Is that it becomes a bench mark for firms. They literally advertise jobs as “minimum wage”. It then becomes like a glass ceiling for low paid workers. Very hard to break through, especially with the Trade Unions being emasculated by successive Tory, and sadly, LabourGovernments. It’s a tough one. Prior to the advent of the minimum wage, many employers, particularly in Thatchers era, were paying appallingly bad wages. But the trade off is a low pay culture that is depressingly hard to break out of.

 

[blandy]

12 minutes ago, meregreen said:

The danger of minimum wage, universal basic income. Is that it becomes a bench mark for firms. They literally advertise jobs as “minimum wage”. It then becomes like a glass ceiling for low paid workers. Very hard to break through, especially with the Trade Unions being emasculated by successive Tory, and sadly, LabourGovernments. It’s a tough one. Prior to the advent of the minimum wage, many employers, particularly in Thatchers era, were paying appallingly bad wages. But the trade off is a low pay culture that is depressingly hard to break out of.

Very much so

50 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

It's stories like the one from the story I originally quoted that make me think there's merit in some form of guaranteed income policy, where the participant was able to take on an unpaid internship

That there is an example. A government payment to an individual to do work for a private company at zero or tiny wages. The rich company owner profits from the result. Doesn’t seem right me.

[icouldtelltheworld]

21 hours ago, blandy said:

Very much so

That there is an example. A government payment to an individual to do work for a private company at zero or tiny wages. The rich company owner profits from the result. Doesn’t seem right me.

The very idea of unpaid internships makes me uncomfortable, as do lots of other features of the modern labour market. All of which is unlikely to change any time soon, what can change is the nature of state intervention to support people in navigating the system 

[blandy]

35 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

The very idea of unpaid internships makes me uncomfortable, as do lots of other features of the modern labour market. All of which is unlikely to change any time soon, what can change is the nature of state intervention to support people in navigating the system 

The state could intervene to outlaw unpaid internships tomorrow. We can't argue both that stuff is "unlikely to change" and at the same time that "the state can change things to bring in UBI (or whatever)."

[bickster]

7 minutes ago, blandy said:

The state could intervene to outlaw unpaid internships tomorrow.

I believe France did that a long time ago because my daughter had to paid by her employers when she did her year abroad for her French degree

[icouldtelltheworld]

13 minutes ago, blandy said:

The state could intervene to outlaw unpaid internships tomorrow. We can't argue both that stuff is "unlikely to change" and at the same time that "the state can change things to bring in UBI (or whatever)."

Well yeah, they could. But unpaid internships are just one of the more egregious examples of the job market under neoliberalism, which is the larger issue here really. The constraints of globalisation mean that any state is limited in what they can do, and so IMO there is greater capacity for a rethinking of welfare policy than there is any chance of a country unilaterally changing much of any substance with regards employment rights

[blandy]

1 hour ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

there is greater capacity for a rethinking of welfare policy than there is any chance of a country unilaterally changing much of any substance with regards employment rights

I dunno. The national minimum wage was introduced by New Labour and though Tories squealed at the time, the impact was wholly positive.

Personally I think that the notion that we can’t or won’t change employment rights (or improve the benefit system, or tax system), yet on the other hand UBI (which would be a far larger change) is inevitable is somewhat illogical. I think also that reforming business behaviour (hard as the fight may be) is tackling the problem, whereas UBI is tackling the symptoms, but leaving the root cause untouched, to fester away.  The world’s most expensive sticking plaster. 

[Davkaus]

While I think we need more robust safety nets for people who can't work, I think I'm more interested in the 4 day work week as a plausible means of improving the workplace and British productivity than UBI.