UBI - Universal Basic Income - pros and cons

[patents]

When one is creating a fictional US or worldwide life, what does it matter if some people benefit more than others? Just dole out money or credits without limits, or whatever you want. Payment of even $1 of someone's or something else's debt is going to be unfair to others; so, what does it matter.

 

If you lent $10 to your friend and they paid you back with this newly created money whose only existence is to wipe out debt, would you feel that you have been equally compensated for the $10 you lent originally?

 

Then let's move onto free food, entertainment, and everything and anything else that anyone wants. No consequences and no obligations. Life is good.

 

If we can create money out of thin air, why can't we create everything else that people might need or want. Why wait? Let's do it now.

[Buzzard]

16 minutes ago, equanimity said:

What occurs to me is to simply dole out several years' worth of UBI to everybody, and let everybody create their own personal reset. A one-time big payment and no limits on where it goes.  Everybody is moved X number of squares on their own grid, then nothing else is forthcoming for awhile.  Followed by a re-evaluation over the next few years, to see what changed. Maybe a 5-years-later topoff after the results are in.

 

That was my first thought, too. I heard a serious interview with an economist advocating a debt jubilee, and he had the idea of 'Bank Reserve' dollars, that could only be used to pay off debt.  In theory, 'Bank Reserve' dollars would shrink the money supply, or at least it would reduce debt and shrink the banks' balance sheets. He was advocating issuing a one-time big chuck of 'Bank Reserve' dollars to everybody.

 

But then, I heard about the "Universal Basic Income" idea, where everybody starts getting a social security check, regardless of age or circumstance. So it dawned on me, why not combine the two ideas? It seems like it would accomplish the  goals of both ideas, without shocking the monkey.

[Buzzard]

If 230-million Americans received a one-time payment of $50,000, it would require

$11,500,000,000,000. That is, 11.5 -Trillion dollars. It the payment was in 'Bank Reserve' dollars, and it all went to pay debt, it would not be inflationary. And everybody would feel a lot better. Why don't we try that? Or, make it $150,000. We are talking about a debt jubilee configured to be fair enough where it does not start a revolution or a war.

 

But, all of that is inconceivably unlikely. There is no way the banking overlords are going to free the debt slaves. That is just not happening....

[Buzzard]

27 minutes ago, patents said:

....If you lent $10 to your friend and they paid you back with this newly created money whose only existence is to wipe out debt, would you feel that you have been equally compensated for the $10 you lent originally?...

 

In this scheme, the 'Bank Reserve' money can only payback bank debt. It can't payback a bond. It can't payback a personal loan from a friend. It can only payback bank debt, which is where the money was created in the first place.

[plane]

22 hours ago, emocmo said:

 

You do realize that MOST American jobs are in small businesses, right?

I am from a family of four kids.  At one point or another, 3 of the four of us made our livings in businesses we partnered in, or started outright.

Small businesses are all over the place.  They are not cobblers, or carpenters anymore.  They are writers, trainers, software writers.  And a photographer or two.  (That was me!)

Yes, of course. But American definitions are routinely of 500 or fewer employees, whereas Australia defines 15 or fewer. The next thing is that I consider franchises as having the risks of your own business but not being independent.

 

The issue is relative independence from Big Brother and the oligarchy. A guy with a car repair shop and five employees is relatively independent. A company that has 450 employees at fast-food chains is not independent at all.  If you had a small photography studio, your only boss was the customer.

 

One of the main goals of the Corona thing is to gain control of whatever independent business is still left. A high percentage of people were independent in 1876 when it comes to their income. We shall see in a few years of the new War on Viruses.

[turiya]

There will always be people that will attempt to 'game the system'. 

 

For instance, there are people that qualify to receive food stamps. As a consequence of that, there are a certain percentage of those that will sell those food stamps to others.

 

There was a time when there was a welfare program called AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which lasted between 1935-1997. One of the basic criticisms of this program was that it had the effect of breaking up marriages and promoting matriarchy.^[a] This can also be viewed as a way for some to 'game' the system / purposefully fraud the system. In my view, this created the situation whereby a certain percentage of women would opt for choosing to have several illegitimate children as opposed to looking for a  legitimate form of employment.  

 

In both examples, because of the probability that there would be a certain percentage of participants that would 'game' the system, I would suspect that this caused increase levels of monitoring those that received those benefits. 

 

Thus, it would only be logical that a Universal Basic Income program would usher in an expansion of a Surveillance State.  

 

It also has been argued that welfare programs, in general, promote dependency on the system, something that a tyrannical form of government would find quite useful for it's notion of maintaining a future sustainability for itself.

 

Be careful for what you wish for.

 

Edited October 21, 2020 by turiya

[McDavid]

Seems to me UBI is probably on the way. Even GOP is okay with sending multiple stimulus checks to everyone. 
 

This seems like big steps towards UBI.

[cowpoke]

Don't forget this is an election year.  Things, especially the attitudes of politicians, can change right after elections.

 

The best raise I ever got as a state employee was just before election year, when AZ Governor Bruce Babbitt was going to make a run for POTUS.  All AZ State employees got a 10% raise that year (1983), supposedly to make up for several years of stagflation, no raises but rising prices.  In reality, it was just politicians buying votes, as always.

 

UBI is runaway Keynesian economics.  At least Keynes expected the money to be buried, and the people to get paid to dig it back up.  It is just another form of welfare, as is Social Security.  For Social Security, though we are supposed to have to pay specific taxes, so the money is supposedly earned and it is supposedly a forced savings for old age, when one cannot work.  In reality, the politicians have raided SS to the point it has become more of a regressive income tax tied to a welfare program.  Welfare programs are slavery, at worst, regressive taxes for all through inflation, at best.  UBI would be "progressive" in the sense that we would be progressing faster into the bottomless pit of tax through inflation, and enslavement of the productive ones by an ever increasing number of non-productive members of the (phony) economy, who certainly won't see themselves as being slaveholders, but will be, nevertheless.  Those who risk life and limb to provide healthcare, food, and etc., will either not be compensated for it, or they will need to be overly compensated, thereby increasing the gap between the haves (those with employment) and the have nots (those existing solely on UBI).

 

It seems to me a foolish experiment against the nature of things, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.  Politicians love to buy votes, and if people are willing to vote their futures away so they can, then it will happen.  

[McDavid]

The thing that bums me out about UBI is I’ll make like maybe 150- 175% earning a wage of what someone on UBI would just get automatically.

 

On the other hand banks just print money to benefit themselves, so might as well help common person.

[cowpoke]

I don't think Keynesian economics has done much for the common person other than cause the quickening of the destructive influence of consumerism on the environment of planet Earth.  Now we are all supposed to believe we can become Tesla Starmen and excape this recycled dung heap before someone starts playing this for real:

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_(card_game)

 

UBI, as an extreme form of KE will most likely hurry our pace into oblivion.   For some that is a desirable outcome.

[patents]

34 minutes ago, cowpoke said:

I don't think Keynesian economics has done much for the common person other than cause the quickening of the destructive influence of consumerism on the environment of planet Earth.  Now we are all supposed to believe we can become Tesla Starmen and excape this recycled dung heap before someone starts playing this for real:

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_(card_game)

 

UBI, as an extreme form of KE will most likely hurry our pace into oblivion.   For some that is a desirable outcome.

The part of Keynes theories that is often overlooked and really has been ignored for decades is that the government is supposed to "save" (run surpluses that the government retains) during the good years in order to be able to spend more than it takes in during the bad times (the deficit spending periods). I am not sure that Keynes ever considered running deficits for decade over decade. And, Keynes was a macro-economist. The common man (as a subclass of a state's citizen) does not directly figure in other than as a part of the aggregate citizenry. I am not sure that Keynes, the person, would even recognize what today is considered Keynesian Economics. But that is how we bastardize everything in these times.