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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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There are two major concerns I have with UBI.
It's highly inflationary.
It fosters dependency, and it's an economic-political death spiral. People on UBI vote for those who support higher UBI. Inflation increases due to increased monetary velocity. People demand higher UBI due to cost of living increases. Votes go to those who promise higher UBI, etc. The cycle continues until you're wiping your ass with currency or some form of CBDC is implemented to stop the bleeding.
Giving everyone 12k/year doesn't foster dependency? Dude I make enough to not be homeless but if I had an extra 12k I'd spend it and my lifestyle would inflate. That's dependency. I depend on it to live a nicer life.
And giving every person in America 12k/year would cost over 50% of the budget and produce almost no growth unless it was entirely funded by debt.
It might not foster dependency but it would be incredibly expensive.
It's over 3.5 trillion if given to everyone.
Source on the bottom 80% paying most of the taxes please?
Don't forget redirecting over half the budget to fund a UBI significantly alters the US economy.
If it isn't for everyone it isn't universal. Even at 2 trillion it would devastate our economy. We don't have that much free money in the system.
Now please provide a source on your claim that the bottom 80% pay most of the taxes as Im fairly certain that is not true.
You made the claim and Im asking for your source for that claim. Do you have one?
How would it not produce growth? Pretty much guaranteed that 100% of this money is spent back into the economy vs hoarded in investments
Because it is taken from the same economy. If I tax Bill $1 to give Bob $1 we didn't see any net growth. The only way it produces growth is if we gave Bob $1 but never collected $1 from anyone which becomes unsustainable in the long term.
And?
We cannot afford to ditch over 50% of the budget to replace it with a UBI that won't produce much if any benefit?
Ah, you assume it won't benefit people.
You're wrong.
No Im saying it will provide little to no net benefit to the larger economy whereas redirecting over 50% of the budget to give $12k/yr to everyone would be catastrophic to the larger economy. I suspect the economy tanking would end up hurting more than the 12k helps.
The only way UBI doesn't significantly harm the US economy, and to be clear Im talking about only the USA right now, is if the payments are either so small they don't help, the payments are not universal and are targeted towards those that need money, or if the entire thing is financed by increasing the national debt which is unsustainable over the long run. None of these are as beneficial as they seem.
Unfortunately I think you're arguing with idiots. You're right it wouldn't be able to be universal because it wouldn't change anything if it was, it would just be made up for somewhere else and the problem would be a can getting kicked down the road for someone else to deal with
Do we have any sort of previous example of this happening? Was this ever tested? If no: a test is seemingly well worth it.
That is an excellent analogy.
Not really. There is a big difference when the free money is guaranteed over a long period of time. I don't think it takes any extraordinary leaps in logic that people would stop working if they were given a bunch of money every month.
There's a big difference when its guaranteed over a period of time. Then you can actually feel justified in quitting whatever job you have since you know the money will keep coming in.
I mean, I spent a year wearing sweat pants and hardly leaving my house.
It was a joke... I was still working full time, just from home. And I didn't go anywhere because there was a pandemic going on and I didn't want to be around people. But the fact that I was 100% in sweatpants and lounging around the house for a year did feel lazy, but had nothing to do with the checks coming in from the government.
Hey I take umbrage. Sweatpants are a vital part of attire for WFH / home gym enthusiasts, even post-lockdown.
Fuck yeah it did. I was making the same on unemployment as I would have being at work. I wanted to stay laid off.
Yeah, but that probably applies to a lot of people. Why would anyone choose to do all the bullshit (but necessary) jobs if they can get paid the same for sitting at home?
Billionaires are sociopaths.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/world-news/universal-basic-income-does-not-cause-inflation/articleshow/98801058.cms
Do you have a link to the original source or the name of the authors? Neither is in your article only a statement that it was sourced from another site.
You are technically correct, but in a practical sense: lol good luck with that.
Yep, unfortunately our politicians are bought and paid for by the rich.
Thanks Citizens United
So to summarize other people's points, evidence shows that those concerns are not outcomes of UBI so there is no need to be worried.
I think this is a great example of what rich people think of us. This user would prefer that people stay homeless rather than cut back on their own luxuries so that others could have a more decent basic standard of living. Those with stable basic housing feel like they're living the normal life they have earned, while a homeless person is someone that doesn't want to put in the work to carry themselves. The wealthy think the same way about the middle class: we want vacation days, adequate healthcare, a proper justice system, and decent wages/fair business market without earning it. However, a person with a 1 bedroom apartment they can call home is a king to a homeless person.
Here, we see the privilege. They argue that it would foster dependency because the poor would vote for better standards of living rather than contribute to society. To think this way, we have to ignore that someone cannot meaningfully contribute to society without adequate housing and stability. We would also have to ignore our own hypocrisy in that we argue that our standard of living is dependent on the exploitation of the homeless.
These are the very same arguments that the wealthy elite use. If they pay more taxes, then the poor will slippery slope the vote by electing politicians that continue to increase taxes on the rich, while also becoming dependent on that revenue.
I am in no way attacking this user. It's a common mentality across the world. Instead, I'm using their comment to point out how this mentality works regardless of social class: 1) my efforts have created my wealth, while everyone else that is poorer just doesn't work to earn it, and 2) helping the lazy poorer people makes them dependent on my work. Repeat these arguments in some fashion all the way down to the poorest person on Earth 🔁
Also the actual research on it is not as rosy as some seem to think.