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March 28, 2024, 07:01:02 PM

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Universal Basic Income (2021 EDITION)

Started by Lemming, July 28, 2021, 05:01:45 PM

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Lemming

Come on then let's have another thread about this. It's a bit of a hobby-horse topic for me, and it's extremely heartening to see the concept lodging itself so firmly in the public discourse since the pandemic.

A lot of positive signs lately as big swinging dick (or clit) economists come out in support, numerous states and cities across the USA all run their own UBI pilots (none of which, afaik, are actually UBI pilots, but rather schemes focused on giving income to hyper-specific demographics of people, but it's a start), calls are rising across South Africa to implement UBI in a desperate un-fucking attempt.

Additionally, I was listening to a Nigerian radio station the other day and they had a representative on from a pro-UBI group, who said that the movement for UBI in Nigeria is rapidly growing and gaining momentum. Wales and Scotland show interest in the concept, despite apparently being cockblocked by the government, who don't believe in UBI because it doesn't target help to "those who need it most". They therefore suggest using Universal Credit instead, which provides far less than a basic income, makes you wait five weeks, can have huge chunks of your payments be removed via sanctions for batshit reasons at any moment, and is also getting cut in October, just to fuck with claimants. To get help to those who need it most.

The Lib Dems have adopted UBI as a policy, and the Greens did long before that. Support among MPs appears to be growing.

Media outlets have been running a lot of anti-UBI pieces lately, often with hilarious conclusions like "well it could work, but we can't send the message that being able to exist is a human right!" and "b-but lottery winners don't start their own businesses!". Dunno if anyone else has noticed this, but it seems like most arguments against UBI in the media are becoming more and more purely ideological, as the usual practical objections start to shift into the background.

What's the verdict? Is this the way forward? Are even right-wing governments going to have their hands forced due to automation and other forms of massive job losses? Is it going to be coopted by right-wing governments as an excuse to gut public services and leave people even worse off? Is it just an un-fundable nightmare to start with? Should we try for the lesser-mentioned Universal Basic Services instead?

Another interesting thing that's been going on around the world lately is a rise in anti-work[nb]or, pro-labour movements, or anti-traditional-work movements. You know what I mean[/nb] movements, chiefly among younger people. Service workers are quitting en masse in America and really putting the pressure on employers to improve wages and conditions, office workers all over are choosing/threatening to quit if they're not allowed to continue remote working, and people in China are reportedly joining the "lie flat movement", which promotes chilling right the fuck out. There's a subreddit, r/antiwork, which has had a meteoric rise in membership as of late. I'm showing my support by not being able to get a job no matter how pitifully I beg employers to hire me remaining unemployed as an act of solidarity.

Are we on the cusp of something or other, or is all this energy just going to flop?

Never gonna happen. At least not until those at the top can profit, by which point they'll have likely killed off most of the lower orders anyway.

We've seen the test run with furlough. How the right wing media managed to poison that, framing it as free cash for work-shy cowards. All they need to do is keep convincing their retired base that young people are lazy and shit with money and they'll get away with literal murder.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Lemming on July 28, 2021, 05:01:45 PM
Additionally, I was listening to a Nigerian radio station the other day and they had a representative on from a pro-UBI group, who said that the movement for UBI in Nigeria is rapidly growing and gaining momentum. Wales and Scotland show interest in the concept, despite apparently being cockblocked by the government, who don't believe in UBI because it doesn't target help to "those who need it most". They therefore suggest using Universal Credit instead, which provides far less than a basic income, makes you wait five weeks, can have huge chunks of your payments be removed via sanctions for batshit reasons at any moment, and is also getting cut in October, just to fuck with claimants. To get help to those who need it most.


Yeah I've heard this argument, I've also heard it from people who have a chip on their shoulder about white middle-class 'liberals' asking for it, claiming they're bad to do so because they're blind to the needs of disabled people etc with extra requirements. But that's bollocks, I don't think most people asking for UBI thinks it should cause the removal of additional, needs-based help.

Video Game Fan 2000

It's hard to imagine UBI happening without it being cradled by rampant privatisation or market-isation of public spaces and services.

I think some variation of it will happen but this will inevitably come in the form of replacing all welfare with something like a voucher system for education, health care, child care, etc. It's also a bad replacement for affirmative action in specifically economically impoverished or isolated groups like first gen immigrants, those with severe disabilities or racial minorities in general.

With total economic collapse on the horizon schemes that are based around "creating wealth" and "growth" are doomed. The issue isn't that wealth is growing faster in some sections of society than others, the issue is that our economies rely on a circuit between private property and growth which must be voluntarily dismantled before it is cataclysmically broken by climate induced social conflict.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

A good opening post and issue close to my heart. Covid has been majorly disruptive to our Leeds UBI Lab but at the same time it has pushed fundamental need up the agenda and furlough has given a strong indication to millions that it could work.

I would like to explore some issues to do with affordability and housing and the potential for it to be implemented badly and even mutating into something it was never meant to be, but I am still overall in favour of a universal income guarantee, one thing people need to appreciate is this policy doesn't exist in a vacuum, it must be used alongside other radical changes in other to work.

I look at FDR's 2nd Bill of Rights and think those ideas alongside a basic income sound good.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#:~:text=The%20Second%20Bill%20of%20Rights,United%20States%20President%20Franklin%20D.&text=His%20remedy%20was%20to%20declare,rights%20to%20a%20fair%20income

Even Nixon's administration was exploring a basic income option, open mindedly and at an advanced stage.

Go back and kill Hitler? Sure, but for our generations future go back and kill the Chicago Boys.


dissolute ocelot

Are we talking £73 a week (basic unemployment benefit) or £335 a week (the living wage), because there is a significant difference.

katzenjammer

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 28, 2021, 06:04:39 PM
I don't think most people asking for UBI thinks it should cause the removal of additional, needs-based help.

Oh I'd assumed that's exactly what it would be.  Save all the money in administering means tested benefits, just give every adult 1000 quid a month or something. and stop all the whingeing from the daily mailers about scroungers since they'd get it too.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: katzenjammer on July 28, 2021, 06:52:27 PM
Oh I'd assumed that's exactly what it would be.  Save all the money in administering means tested benefits and stop all the whingeing about scroungers, just give every adult 1000 quid a month or something.

There are different schools of thought about this and it depends whether you look at UBI as being a standalone policy or something that has to be accompanied by major reform of issues such as rent, housing and tax.

Paul Calf

Significantly raising the lower tax band threshold and improving out-of-work benefits to a level people can live on comfortably and treating the unemployed as human beings would be a far better solution than bunging a grand of taxpayers' money back at the taxpayer. It's a neoliberal solution to the problem of in- and out-of-work poverty.

UBI will be used as a cover to strip back public services to the bone. It shouldn't, but it will.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: katzenjammer on July 28, 2021, 06:52:27 PM
Oh I'd assumed that's exactly what it would be.  Save all the money in administering means tested benefits, just give every adult 1000 quid a month or something. and stop all the whingeing from the daily mailers about scroungers since they'd get it too.

I imagine it would be centred around the money for an able bodied person's needs so would take into account of the "scrounger" argument but would still expect i dunno, extra money for people to spend on wheelchairs if they need it (an over simplistic generalised example to the point of crassness, I know).

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Paul Calf on July 28, 2021, 07:01:32 PM
Significantly raising the lower tax band threshold and improving out-of-work benefits to a level people can live on comfortably and treating the unemployed as human beings would be a far better solution than bunging a grand of taxpayers' money back at the taxpayer. It's a neoliberal solution to the problem of in- and out-of-work poverty.

UBI will be used as a cover to strip back public services to the bone. It shouldn't, but it will.

In the face of automation and offensively rich billionaires it should be used to make work unnecessary and optional for both service workers and office units.

Paul Calf

You could do that with unemployment benefits though. You don't have to pay unemployed people subsistence wages and treat them like shit. It's a political choice to do so.

Paul Calf

You can say that it's waste, but paying someone on £100,000 a year another 12000 is equally wasteful.

Sebastian Cobb

But if lots of people are unemployed then why even go to the administrative effort of checking?

If the money is getting taxed from the right places then paying 12 bags to people who don't really need it shouldn't be much of a problem.


Zetetic

#15
Quote from: katzenjammer on July 28, 2021, 06:52:27 PM
Save all the money in administering means tested benefits
Means-testing isn't the same as needs-testing.

The second is about whether you have an impairment or other issue that imposes a requirement on you above and beyond the general population. The first is about whether you could pay to meet that requirement yourself.

When a doctor writes you a prescription on the basis that you're unwell, that's needs-based. When the English state decides that you're not low-income and can pay £10 to convert that 'script into medication, that's means-based.

(Not actually a great example, apologies, because England's complete eligibility criteria for free prescriptions is an insane mess of needs- and means-based testing that makes no fucking sense other than as a waste of everyone's time and energy.)

UBI wouldn't get rid of the need for free healthcare. It wouldn't get rid of the additional costs imposed on people with various physical impairments to navigate our built environments, and the need to compensate them for this.

What UBI does do, by definition, is get rid of means-based testing for things like "income support" (which aren't "needs-based" in the sense of deriving from additional needs).

Zetetic

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on July 28, 2021, 07:01:56 PM
extra money for people to spend on wheelchairs if they need it (an over simplistic generalised example to the point of crassness, I know).
I think it's a pretty good example.

bgmnts

Pretty sure I saw an article on the BBC about the notion of trialling it in Wales.

It'll never happen though. Most people dont give a shit about people on the dole getting 300 quid a month or homeless dying on the street, you think they would want a society that has that level of safety net for workshy subhuman scum and asulum seekers?

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Lemming on July 28, 2021, 05:01:45 PM
Come on then let's have another thread about this. It's a bit of a hobby-horse topic for me, and it's extremely heartening to see the concept lodging itself so firmly in the public discourse since the pandemic.

As someone else who has had UBI as a bit of a hobby-horse topic since first learning about the "impossible idea" 10 or 15 years ago, I'm actually a little disheartened by the way it's being discussed/introduced now.

As far as I'm concerned, the idea was for it to cover a basic standard of living in a society where a huge number of jobs could eventually become automated, and where "work" would no longer be the be-all end-all of people's lives once the need for a constant workforce became less and less essential. Never in any discussions I saw on the topic was it suggested that people who want to work shouldn't be able to if they have their basic costs of living covered. However, what I'm seeing a lot of now is people who do want to work/have career ambitions/own their own businesses etc. being forced into a position where they can no longer realistically do so, and any nascent UBI measure is just consolation that "hey, at least you won't starve to death!" What was once an idea that could have organically changed societies for the better now seems little more than an "emergency measure", and - I hate to say it - comes off as being far more preoccupied with ensuring as many people as possible are entirely dependent on their government and have less and less autonomy.

Great ideas can (and often will) be co-opted and bastardised. I still completely support the concept of UBI, but I accept that it's not inherently "a good thing" when put in the hands of those who run the current system. Regardless of your position on COVID and the resultant economic symptoms (many of which we haven't even begun to feel the weight of), it's been an unprecedented year in terms of restructuring almost the entire world economy, and I think you'd have to have a great deal of trust in the world's governments and major corporations to assume that this will ultimately work out in our favour.

Which isn't to say it won't be made attractive to a majority of people. I understand that being able to do little other than sit and watch Netflix, learn an instrument and have all essentials delivered by Amazon without you ever having to lift a finger isn't exactly undesirable. The way some folk have been talking during this past year makes me think they'd love nothing more than to have no obligations whatsoever outside of their own private space and maintaining basic functions rather than risk engaging with the dirty, confusing, sometimes scary world of other people out there. It's awfully tempting.

Lemming

Watching the Wales trial really closely, as a shitton of commentators and economists are flocking in on this one and demanding that it be a real UBI trial in which a constituency or other broad area is selected to participate, rather than the original non-plan of just giving money to people leaving care.

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on July 28, 2021, 11:26:01 PM
As far as I'm concerned, the idea was for it to cover a basic standard of living in a society where a huge number of jobs could eventually become automated, and where "work" would no longer be the be-all end-all of people's lives once the need for a constant workforce became less and less essential. Never in any discussions I saw on the topic was it suggested that people who want to work shouldn't be able to if they have their basic costs of living covered. However, what I'm seeing a lot of now is people who do want to work/have career ambitions/own their own businesses etc. being forced into a position where they can no longer realistically do so, and any nascent UBI measure is just consolation that "hey, at least you won't starve to death!" What was once an idea that could have organically changed societies for the better now seems little more than an "emergency measure", and - I hate to say it - comes off as being far more preoccupied with ensuring as many people as possible are entirely dependent on their government and have less and less autonomy.

Interesting, I tend to see the opposite argument usually, which is that UBI would potentially encourage people to spend the funds on starting their own small businesses. Not sure how true that'd turn out to be in reality, but if you've just been given something in the region of £12k to do what you like with, I can imagine a lot of people using that to kickstart their dream of owning an Etsy soap shop or whatever.

Sitting indoors all day watching MTV and Netflix is a bit existential-dread-y[nb]although I think in the modern age, as you indicate, a lot of people would actually love this, and I have to admit it'd suit me pretty well[/nb], but I'll still take it over my current position, where I spend all day watching MTV and Netflix while also applying to 30 jobs that won't get back to me, interspersed with ominous visits to the JokeCentre Plus. At the very least, the policy is likely to result in a much-needed cultural change in which labour is no longer seen as a prerequisite to basic needs - and if the most utopian proponents of UBI are to be believed, we'd all be freed up to connect with our local communities by going around planting flowers or some shit like that. A future in which vast groups of the population are wholly dependent on the government is potentially kind of grim, but if there just aren't enough jobs (which pay a living wage) to go around after a certain point, what's the alternative?

This makes UBI particularly interesting in certain African countries, where the population has grown far beyond the number of jobs available. The campaigner from Nigeria I heard the other day said the unemployment rate there is something like 1 in 10 - and that's before you take into account that just under half of the population are currently children who over the next few years will reach working age. I'm about as far as it's possible to get from being an economist, but I don't see any way around these kinds of issues other than governments stepping in and covering people's expenses, whether that takes the form of UBI or whatever else.

Lemming

Bumping rather than starting a new topic, there's some news (most of it non-news):

- The Wales trial is going ahead, despite the legendary Guy Standing, among others, pointing out that it's in no way an actual UBI trial due to its ultra-limited scope.
- Greens and Lib Dems put forward a proposal which, according to Green guy Zack Polanski, Labour and the Tories united against.
- Yesterday, the Commission on Social Security proposed a plan to scrap UC and replace it with a guaranteed minimum income for all adults, accompanied by raises in Child Benefit and PIP.
- Elsewhere, there's continued support for UBI in South Africa, and Barbados has made some noises about introducing the policy in the near future.

About six months after starting this thread, not sure we're really any closer to anything tangible - on the contrary, the situation for people on no income/low income in the UK has obviously worsened thanks to the UC cut and the introduction this week of a ghoulish IDS-era style policy of forcing claimants to accept any old shit. But the idea of some form of economic security for all seems to be creeping more and more into the public discourse at least.

bgmnts

Imagine getting working from home, 4 day working week and universal basic income within a few years.

Just have to fund it by taxing the super rich and we'd be as close to a utopian society as we could feasibly get.

Keebleman

Five years ago Intelligence Squared hosted a debate about UBI.  The motion was "Is a Universal Basic Income the safety net of the future?"

https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basic-income-safety-net-future

An interesting feature of the debate (presumably they do it every time, but this is the only one I've seen so I can't be sure) is that the audience votes on the motion before the debate and then again afterwards, but the result of the pre-debate vote is withheld until the end. 
Spoiler alert
Pre-debate result was 35% in favour of the motion, 20% against, 45% undecided.  Post-debate those figures changed to 31%, 61% and 8% respectively.
[close]

It seems that to see the whole debate you have to be a member of Wondrium (formerly the Great Courses), but that is something worth doing anyway.

https://www.wondrium.com/is-universal-basic-income-the-safety-net-of-the-future

MojoJojo

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on July 28, 2021, 06:31:27 PMAre we talking £73 a week (basic unemployment benefit) or £335 a week (the living wage), because there is a significant difference.

Yeah. I think those who think UBI will make unemployment comfortable are guilty of dreadful wishful thinking. The reason economists are behind the idea is it changes the incentives to encourage more productive jobs. The idea it will benefit poor people is dangerously misguided.

The other thing to bear in mind is it involves a major change to the whole economy, and as such, how it is introduced is at least as important as what it is.


Mobbd

This is a nice thread, Lemming. Thanks for starting it and for giving us this update/bump.

I always stay tuned to UBI, have read a lot about it over the years, and I'll be in favour of it until I hear a good case against. A risk of inflation is the most intelligent case I've heard against it but (a) that's happening now anyway and (b) it can be predicated, controlled, and allowed for in our calculations, (c) this isn't a problem when we do quantitative easing to help the mega-rich apparently.

As is probably the case for many other radical proposals, the immediate arguments against it are always, always, always the same. And when you answer them, the objectors just go quiet and don't take it any further and would probably still vote No in any referendum (as happened in Switzerland) because they still don't really understand it and prefer to trust their stupid gut instead. The objections are usually [conservative] moral objections rather than practical ones (this sort of thing) and I'm tired of giving informed, dispassionate answers that go nowhere.

Quote from: Lemming on January 29, 2022, 02:15:51 AMGreens and Lib Dems put forward a proposal which, according to Green guy Zack Polanski, Labour and the Tories united against.

And as for this, we should't really be surprised should we? Fucking bastids (said in an Alexei Sayle voice).

mjwilson

Quote from: MojoJojo on January 29, 2022, 10:18:10 AMYeah. I think those who think UBI will make unemployment comfortable are guilty of dreadful wishful thinking. The reason economists are behind the idea is it changes the incentives to encourage more productive jobs.

Are you able to expand on this a bit please?

bgmnts

Quote from: MojoJojo on January 29, 2022, 10:18:10 AMYeah. I think those who think UBI will make unemployment comfortable are guilty of dreadful wishful thinking. The reason economists are behind the idea is it changes the incentives to encourage more productive jobs. The idea it will benefit poor people is dangerously misguided.

I dont think anyone thinks it will make us comfier. It's the social safety net, not the social memory foam mattress.

Unless this is a semantics argument and by comfortable you mean less fucked.

But yeah I suppose it's a red flag if economists are behind this as it makes me go hmm why?

But we don't know enough yet I suppose.

Porky

Quote from: Natnar on January 29, 2022, 11:37:35 AMI guess this would mean the end of the Jobcentre wouldn't it? Or would jobless people still be monitored in some way?
Hopefully job centres would be replaced by employment exchanges .. places that actually concentrated on getting people into employment as a single focus.

Porky

#29
The other focus employment exchanges should also have is to do everything to make sure that people who are in employment are kept in employment or have had their employment terminated are assisted in challenging that termination decision. .. perhaps go as far as replacing employment tribunals.