There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life.
I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panicking about my business. When I accepted the fate of my business, I chilled out and just hung out with my kids. These past few months were amazing. I loathe finding a new job now. Instead, I’ve built a mechanical keyboard, explored streaming, learned how to cook, read useless books, and learned how to be present.
I see the choice of UBI as: “do I toil away for the wealthy class? Or do I took away for myself?” No way will I toil for someone else if I had a choice.
The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living. Your entire existence relies on a globalist system of slave level labor producing products from all corners of the world. Automation of every industry is impossible unless we have true human replacement robots (many decades out). UBI will over time simply raise costs of all goods/services to subwelfare level that people "can't live on".
Whos going to: - clean your hotel/office/home - cook your food - serve your food - fix your household - grab your garbage - build new houses - build/maintain roads - build/maintain water, sewers - deliver your packages/mail - Drive trucks around - pack/unpack trucks - produce meat products (have you seen a meatpacking plant?) - maintain farms/livestock - provide difficult medical services - be a nurse aide (clean poo?)
I have not even started to list all the jobs required in order to "magically" produce our cheap goods from overseas including clothing and electronics. These are farrrr from completely automated.
Lazy Americans don't need to work right? Discussion about UBI is an expression of guilt over how well our standard of living (general hacker news crowd) compared to the vast majority of the world.
In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck.
Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, the same job is done by three people, two of whom jog outside next to the vehicle in the sweltering heat and manually empty the bins into it. They're breaking their backs and get paid like crap.
> In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it.
Having worked in the service industry in wealthy Iceland for years, I can’t say I agree with this statement.
While working exusting 12 hour shifts with mandatory minimum pay (sometime a little less because of exploitative unpaid overtime), the owner of the business was regularly found to be the highest payed person in the country.
In other words, my work, contributed to some rich guy getting richer, while my compensation was only as little as he was allowed to pay me. That doesn’t seem fair does it. Ask any working class person, in europe and I’m sure they have a similar story.
I live in Vietnam and get to see the rubbish truck go past my house every day exactly as the person above you described. It's summer time here, 35-40 degrees and high humidity every day. One person drives the truck, the other two go through people bins and sort their rubbish, extracting the recycling since nobody here has the habit of separating their waste. I don't know the exact wage of these guys, but judging from other government jobs it's probably around 3 million VND/month (~$130), slightly less than $1600 a year, and it's likely they work 6 days a week.
Food and rent is cheap here, but not that cheap. You can barely survive on that wage, especially if you have a family. You will be eating mostly rice and probably scrounging for other work on the grey market.
In Iceland, you'll get at least minimum wage, $2500 a month, ~$30,000 a year. Of course, the economies are different. However, using PPP (purchasing power parity) [1], Iceland minimum wage would be equivalent to around $13,000 a year in Vietnam, or 8 times a garbage collector's pay here, for significantly easier work and less hours.
I'm not trying to say that you had it easy, or that it was OK to pay you that amount for such long shifts and to stiff you on overtime. However, by objective comparison people working equivalent jobs in developing countries have it much, much, worse.
Even though the working class in rich countries like Iceland is constantly cheated out of their fair compensations for a (relatively) shitty job. One must not forget that in the grand scheme of things, we still have considerable privilege by the nature of our birthplace.
We can—and should—complain about how we get the shorter end of the stick in the current economic system. But we must not forget that globally we constantly are the beneficiaries of much worse cheating of the foreign working class.
As I write this we are still calling for the arrest of Icelandic business owners who were guilty of bribing Namibian government officials in exchange for a privileged and unfair access to common Namibian fisheries in a scandal known as Fishrot. We are also waiting for the justice system to act on a slumlord who took advantage of imported labor, and left a house he rented them with inadequate fire escapes. The house burned down with three people (all foreign laborers) still in it unable to escape. The Icelandic justice system seem to be unwilling to pursue justice in either of these scandals, demonstrating how Icelanders are criminally benefiting in the international context.
Fairness is relative. In Iceland, that minimum wage guarantees that you can live in some comfort. In the US, you can work in a similar job with similar hours, but your shifts are often completely unpredictable (and intentionally kept below 35 hrs/week to avoid paying benefits), you can be fired at any time, and a single unexpected expense like a health problem can see you reduced to homelessness.
>> In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck.
This is true in America as well, FYI. It's a large source of union jobs.
They actually stopped using prisoners, but are still only paying $10.25 an hour and work one of the hardest jobs I can imagine. They are basically not allowed to use the lift on the truck because it slows them down, so they hand lift my cans every time in the 95 degree heat.
In Southeast Asia? Try New Orleans, Louisiana where sanitation workers have been striking to make $15 (they currently make $10.25 with no benefits) and jog along side the truck and empty the cans by hand.
> And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated
That isn't really obvious to me as having a cause/effect relationship. Could you please expound? Why would high salaries cause heavy automation in a given field?
Automation only reduces cost if wages are already sufficiently high so that the cost of initial investment and maintenance is economically justified in the mid/long term.
The reason you see trash pickets riding robotic trash collectors in rich western countries is simple: it's far cheaper to buy and maintain a robot than it is to pay the salaries of enough people to achieve the same goal.
You don't get robotic trash collectors in southeast Asia and Africa and South America because for the price of a single robotic trash collectors you can pay the salary of a bunch of people for a few years. Hence, you get people carting wheelie bins.
> Whos going to: - clean your hotel/office/home - cook your food - serve your food - fix your household - grab your garbage [...]
People will take these "sucky" jobs, but they will be compensated well enough to justify it (since they will have an option of not working). This raise the prices overall, but not at the same level. For example, meat products prices will grow more than let's say organic vegetables. Note that demand for many of the products and services is pretty elastic (most people don't have to go to restaurants, they can cook something at home). This way at least people will have an option of having UBI and living frugally, instead of doing a crappy job.
UBI, at least Andrew Yang's UBI, is not going to remove those jobs - they will still be around and still be in demand because UBI isn't an income, it's a basic income, or around 1/3 of what an income should be for most people.
If anything, the wages of those jobs will go up because the demand of it from laborers will go down.
This is basically how it works in Saudi Arabia. Citizens are guaranteed a job where they can get away with doing nothing. If they happen to be fired, they get a monthly stipend until the government finds them another job. As a result, most of the real work is done by immigrants.
Thank you. These are necessary functions of society that require hard work that although maybe rewarding To some people in some capacity is mostly not desirable labor if other alternatives are available such as spending more time with family and reading whimsical books. How do you convince enough people to clean poo or raise and maintain livestock or climb inside a fuel cell in order to fulfill necessary the needs of society? We know how communism and capitalism traditionally have coerced people to do so. The reality is not pretty from either angle, but are we really even close to that alternative yet? It’s a noble premise but we have a long ways to go.
Most of that stems from the fact that the US dollar is the main global reserve currency - so people around the world are willing to accept them in exchange for real goods and services.
This won't be the case forever. Once it flips, the magically cheap overseas goods become the expensive imported goods only rich people can afford.
Yeah, just a century ago the reserve currency was the pound sterling, a century before that the franc, a century before that the Dutch guilder. I guess people in those times also expected the status quo to last forever.
> The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living.
Your comment makes it complete clear you have a severe lack of real world experience.
Go to a wealthy country. I mean an actual wealthy one where even lower class people are paid well enough to buy a house, have a project car, get at least 6 weeks vacation a year, get generous maternity leave etc. etc.
Now look around and notice that all those sucky jobs you talks about are getting done.
Also notice that in those wealthy countries people can quite readily choose to get welfare to the tune of a few grand a month. They could perfectly sit around and do nothing and get enough money to live, if they wanted to.
But they don't.
Why do you think that is? It's because they're paid well to do those jobs. As long as jobs (even sucky ones) pay well, there will always be a line of people willing to do them.
If there are no people willing to do them, pay more.
As a real-world example I used to live in one such country and I worked in a factory stacking boxes. All day, every day. Pick up box, turn around, put down box. Starting hourly rate was $45/hr. Time and half on Sundays. Double time on a holiday. No union, those were just the pay rates.
The company I worked for still made a healthy profit, and so did the end company the boxes were being stacked for (Safeway, actually)
Not sure if you are thinking of Scandinavian countries? If so, I think you're exaggerating the wealth of your average citizen a tad, even if the point still stands.
But in Scandinavian countries it seems to be mainly immigrants that do the sucky jobs, even if they are better compensated than elsewhere (although of course everything is more expensive, food, housing, etc).
I'm in a similar situation after being laid off from my job. I would have a much more enjoyable life if I didn't have to find a new job. I've improved as a person more over the past few months than I have in the past few years working full-time. Now I have the time (all of it really) to actually think about who I am and how I can improve my habits, diet, health, etc.
I feel like nearly everyone (especially in America) are too caught up in their careers to realize how unhappy and unhealthy they really are.
The problem I see with that is that if a huge number of people take that route and happily (let's assume) live their lives without working, they lose access to the ability to participate in a meaningful way in the economy by producing something of value; if they're not producing value, no one is going to value them, and they'll eventually be locked out of the new, smaller elite group that controls the means of production, and the power that goes along with that.
I don't see how this is any different from the current group of "unskilled" workers who aren't valued (even if they are "essential"). At least with UBI they can live reasonable lives and create their own meaning, through community or art or activism or religion. Any of which are better outcomes than sacrificing most of their time on bullshit jobs which break their backs and/or their spirits.
It is year 2061. I live at the Universal Housing City 14 (or UHC14). Due to rises in housing prices and rent over the years we UBI receivers had to be relocated to these new cities. I was born here as my parents decided to abandon their jobs in favor of pursuing meaning in their lives. Now I can not leave this place. There is no way to earn an income, since everyone here is provided by the UBI and thus no way to pay for education. All of the unskilled labor was automated when UBI laws came to be and first people left factories empty. I am not qualified to do anything in the outside world.
Yes. That was the point in my little dark fantasy. UBI would increase the current price of rents, which is why government had to build new cities that were 100% subsidized by then (in from of UBI) since just UBI was not enough to pay rent anywhere anymore. i.e. if as a hypothetical landlord I know for a fact that you get $XXX/mo from government "for free" then why wouldn't I ask $XXX/mo in rent?
This gets at a problem I always wonder about with UBI (as someone who genuinely sees the value in a successful implementation of it). What happens in 20-30 years once the system has been entrenched. Will the children of those that choose not to work for additional income have decreased social capital an struggle to enter the workplace if they choose? How do you prevent those that choose to work from using the increased wealth to exert force on those who didn't? These are the actually problems I see around UBI, not how to balance the budget.
This is the actual dilemma with UBI that should be discussed. I feel though that not everyone who leaves the workforce will generate $0 in value. There are many people who would rather create their own small business, maybe selling a minor product, streaming video games, or any number of things. Over the past few months I've realized that there is so much opportunity to work for yourself online by providing some niche service that you really can sustain yourself. If you have enough time, patience, and money to find that niche and work at it that is.
It's similar to children of mothers who all stayed at home. A generation later, many of their daughters decide (or are forced) to enter the workforce, but not all. I see working and non-working moms coexist today without any undue tension.
This is actually a really, really good question. It could create entire new future populations of disadvantaged and disenfranchised people with the same types of afflictions as the current groups. True equal access and opportunity would mitigate that of course, but good luck there.
> What happens in 20-30 years once the system has been entrenched.
What about a scenario where we get one big step closer to a vision shown in Idiocracy? A world where people don't need to struggle may be great for some self-directed people, but I suspect it will be ultimately terrible for many (even if they won' see it that way).
From a nilhistic point of view, isn't most work already performed by human useless and pointless in both the grand and minor scale? I do agree that my observation even from the Covid lockdown, is that many people's default state to pursue is activities with 'ease or non-challenged' rather than 'difficult '. To me, Covid lockdown proved why UBI was a bad idea.
If humans have free time, they create dance videos on Tik-tok.
Also, it's obvious there's a lot of people using their time for more interesting things too, even despite the fact that we are pretty isolated and in a high stress situation. And I'd say that if that doesn't get so much publicity is because the spaces we have for that kind of interactions are kinda anemic in modern society (maybe due to spending most of our time working on pointless jobs?).
Good point! We also have to think how long it takes to go from having to work pointless jobs to not having to work at all. Maybe it would be a generational thing where the first group of people will primarily spend time doing things that are deemed pointless (making dancing videos on tik tok), and the next generation is able to grow up more liberated and able to produce more "valuable" things--art, music, poetry, whatever.
Right now, a lot of people seem to think having any job is what makes them valuable. That's not something you get over quickly or easily.
Even stay-at-home parents have this up-hill battle. People in the US are still trying to fight for paternity leave. "Not working" is such an evil concept.
On the other hand, there's me. I hate not working. I would appreciate a UBI, as it would let me get out of a not so great place, and let me focus on working on what I like to do, but I would definitely still be doing useful work.
If the work your going to be doing is useful, then why don't you do it? Or is it objectively not as useful as your current occupation? In general the market compensates based on how much it is wanted by others.
It's amazing what an individual will think is useful when doing the work, vs what a customer who pay for.
> If the work your going to be doing is useful, then why don't you do it?
For me: I am doing/learning how to do it, but I don't have capability to monetize it right now.
In general: I have personally known many people who want to have a career in X, but can't because they are working three jobs to try to house and feed themselves.
> [I]s it objectively not as useful as your current occupation?
For me: It is objectively more useful then my current occupation. I can't explain more without revealing more of my private life than I am comfortable doing here.
In general: Regardless, something being less useful then something else doesn't make it not useful. 75% is less than 100%, but is still greater than 0%.
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Also, bonus argument for UBI.
Most (all?) propositions for UBI I have seen will cover only the bare minimum. Almost everyone wants more than this, and will be willing to work to get the extra money.
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Edit 0: Add less situational arguments.
Edit 1: Add bonus argument.
Edit 2: Move things around because I'm stupid and can't get formatting right the first 3 times.
In software at least, the opposite seems to be true.
You can make $500k+, but you have to spend your time building things that are not only useless, but a net negative to the world.
Or you can choose to spend your time building things that actually benefit individuals as well as humanity and large. But if you want to do that, you have to do it for free.
Nobody is getting paid $500k+ to directly build things that are net negatives to the world.
You can claim that a very senior Facebook employee is contributing to a _platform_ or _product_ that is a net negative to society. But at the same time, the work they're doing directly from an engineering perspective is probably technically on the cutting edge, and they're likely mentoring and growing a large number of other engineers at the same time.
Contributing to technical excellence and growing younger engineers is a positive, which is why they do their job. Don't dehumanize the people working at large corporations. They're not the ones steering the products in democracy-breaking directions.
> Nobody is getting paid $500k+ to directly build things that are net negatives to the world.
Yes, they are.
Anyone involved in adtech, tracking, their garbage news feed algorithm is actively and directly harming humanity.
Sure, they're involved in a good project or two as well, like https://www.opencompute.org/. But that represents a tiny minority of Facebook employees. The vast majority are getting paid directly to build things that are net negatives to the world.
> but at the same time, the work they're doing directly from an engineering perspective is probably technically on the cutting edge
I don't even know how to begin to unpack this. "Hey, I've built this new rocket I call the V2. Don't blame me if my employer uses them to bomb civilians in London, even if I knew that was exactly what they were going to do before I started the project. Just celebrate my technical excellence!"
> Contributing to technical excellence and growing younger engineers is a positive
No. Training young engineers to abuse their users for profit is not a positive.
As for technical excellence, that is quite a stretch for a website that can't even support the browser's "Back" button. But that's another discussion altogether.
How many people would rather raise their kids than work one or more jobs? Or has raising kids not been deemed useful because "in general" the market will compensate based on how much others want it?
A lot of the people objecting also think someday they're going to be a baron of industry who needs income incentives to keep workers toiling away for them.
If your tax burden is overwhelming to your finances you are going to get more out of UBI than you get taxed into it lest its failed in its primary goal of wealth redistribution.
My tax burden isn't overwhelming, but I'd sure like to pay less rather than more. UBI would mean I'd have to pay more (no, "we'll just cut the overhead of existing social programs" will neither be enough -not by a long shot-, nor work, as we'll still need some/many of those social programs).
I'd very much prefer others working as well instead of me having to work more to make up for their not-working, ergo I'm not such a big fan of that kind of wealth redistribution. I'd like a wealth redistribution combined with a work-load redistribution though. They work, I work less, I make less money, they make money, the contribute.
My problem with UBI is that why would giving out "free money" change the world?
Say I'm your landlord and you pay me $100/mo for rent. Now you start getting UBI thats $500/mo. Why wouldn't I increase my rent to $200/mo, $300/mo, or even $400/mo? I know that now you can afford the increase. So you'd still have to earn income if you wanted to stay in that place. All I see is prices going up for anything and everything in population centers.
Only option for people who want the benefit of UBI (i.e. freedom to do whatever they want and not worry about working for a living) would be to move in smaller cities/towns where the demand for the housing is already low enough that price hiking wouldn't make sense.
I also feel like UBI would divide the world even more wealth wise. People on UBI wouldn't be able to afford luxury goods or events since thous would be still aimed at the working people and for people to still work they would have to earn significantly more than what they would get on UBI. Putting this in other words: UBI would be the literal bare minimum to keep a roof over your head and food in your fridge. Forget streaming services. Forget eating out. Forget going to movies/concerts/theater.
Easier way is to think UBI as "free meal" tickets and free housing. Which doesn't sound all that appealing.
When those people move from high rent areas to the presently dilapidated small towns that UBI would revive the renters in the cities won't be able to price gouge their units like they are used to.
Right now housing is totally out of wack because there is an extremely scarce resource (urban housing) that everyone wants and cartel like control of supply to prevent expansion thus making the price grow uncontrollably to consume as much of the maximum incomes earnable in the area as possible.
If suddenly people had a choice between slave for subsistence wages in an extremely high CoL area or move somewhere incredibly cheap and live off government cheese those that make that choice will deflate the demand until a more equitable equilibrium is reached.
So while your landlord could try charging you more for your UBI adjusted you will have the bargaining position that they almost certainly won't be able to replace you with someone willing to pay such outlandish rents.
> Easier way is to think UBI as "free meal" tickets and free housing. Which doesn't sound all that appealing.
For the 20% of food insecure families or ten million+ homeless people in the US it would probably be very appreciated.
And it isn't just the outright homeless, its those currently in abusive households that have no out too.
And it might surprise you, but the working poor - the 80% of paycheck to paycheckers - aren't going to luxury sporting events or buying luxury goods right now anyway. They are paid too little to afford it when the cost of subsistence is so high.
Because he can't alone arbitrarily raise the rent and lose you to another landlord, but if across the board people suddenly had $XXX more money per month it would be stupid not to increase the current rents for that amount (assuming they aren't a slumlord). Most people don't want to move away from large population centers (where most rent payers live).
Also when the experiment begins there are exactly zero guarantees that it will last more than one election cycle, so would you by immediately quitting your job and moving to a cheaper city to enjoy couple years of UBI or would just pay the extra cost in rent from the "free money" you get from the government and wait out if the experiment continues or not?
I can easily see that increase to be permanent if the program is seen as a success and then people are left with the same decision of moving out of the cities where they have their lives established in favor of not having to work for a living.
I grant you that I have a very pessimistic view of the future and it sure would be wonderful if I could just dick around playing WoW all day without having to worry about bills, but the little devil on my shoulder is constantly whispering scenarios where all attempts at making world better through charity just end up with us in a worst place than where we started.
Because the price of rent is based on housing supply and housing demand. Neither of those change significantly with UBI. At best people will upgrade their housing.
If I can now pay say $100/mo for rent and after UBI I get $100/mo more. If I don't want to quit working I can now pay $200/mo for rent. This means that I would be looking for a bigger place to rent.
Now multiply this across the whole society and it becomes really apparent that landlords who do not increase their rents at all are just leaving money on the table that they could easily get.
Because if my hypothetical landlord would increase my rent say 1/2 of the new UBI increase I would get on top of my salary it would be really silly to start looking for a new place with same price as my old rent since those would all now be worst in one way or another.
Supply and demand it the main driver obviously, but just look at the Silicon Valley and neighboring areas. The rents are absurd partly because of demand, but mostly because the tech companies are paying ridiculous amount of money for the people to work there. If the pay would go down the rents would have to come down even if the demand stayed the same, since no one could afford them anymore. With UBI it would be the opposite. The demand would stay the same, but suddenly everyone could pay more for the same place.
> The rents are absurd partly because of demand, but mostly because the tech companies are paying ridiculous amount of money for the people to work there.
I think the correlation runs the other way. Tech companies pay ridiculous amounts of money because the rents are absurd, because demand far outstrips supply.
1. Demand is high because tech companies hire a lot of people.
2. Supply is limited because of geography, NIMBY-ism and Prop 13.
3. Tech companies pay their employees more and more money to retain them because it costs so much to live here. Also there are other tech companies happy to outbid them if they do not.
If supply weren't limited or job options not so plentiful, there would be no reason for tech companies to pay people more. They aren't handing out huge salaries for the heck of it.
I don’t have issues with people owning billions, AND I’m for a UBI (though not in the US, you have way too many issues to fix before even considering one IMHO).
Weird isn’t it? Maybe things aren’t as black and white as you said and nuances are possible.
> At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panicking about my business. When I accepted the fate of my business, I chilled out and just hung out with my kids.
You might be in the minority of people with mature enough emotional response and ability to deal with stress.
What would happen if you had an existing alcohol/opiate/etc addiction? It seems that UBI provides few precautions from money flowing towards addictions and relies on everybody being at their best behavior and vice sector not expanding to capture that disposable income.
> In particular, Forget was struck by the improvements in health outcomes over the four years. There was an 8.5% decline in hospitalisations – primarily because there were fewer alcohol-related accidents and hospitalisations due to mental health issues – and a reduction in visits to family physicians.
That is promising, but US examples are less auspicious.
Two large unconditional programs that come to mind are the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend to state residents and tribal distributions to Native Americans.
Alaska tends to lead various reports on drug/alcohol abuse per capita and "Although they only make up 1.7% of the U.S. population, Native Americans experience substance abuse and addiction at much higher rates than other ethnic groups."
Did you read the link you posted? Here’s a direct quote from the section discussing the factors contributing to the prevalence of alcoholism is Native American communities:
“The overall economic disadvantage of Native Americans, characterized by poor education, poverty, and limited resources, likely contributes to the prevalent abuse of alcohol among this ethnic group.”
Elsewhere on the page it cites the specifics such as lack of access to education, lack of access to health care, underemployment. Let’s not forget centuries of getting fucked over by the federal government.
Do you have source which lists UBI as another factor?
> What would happen if you had an existing alcohol/opiate/etc addiction?
IIRC studies have shown that about 9-11% of Americans have/had an addiction. I think you should consider trying to find out if your assumption that the majority of people have addictions is substantiated.
This article[1] claims 21 million Americans (out of 330+ million) have addictions, although it only includes drugs and alcohol.
Your fellow citizens are not employing you or else the desolate ghettos would be overflowing with capital growth.
Traditionally it takes a capitalist to start a business that can feed and house a population and that capitalist is in it to extract value from their labor. The job does not exist to serve the community, it exists to make the business owner richer. All the demand in the world will not build a sandwich shop lest a capitalist has the funds to build the building. Even if that capitalist is a local who can get a bank loan to do it, etc.
I really curious how many of the jobs no one wants to do would still get done. I get that the B in UBI is "basic" but still, so many necessary jobs are jobs no one really wants to do but they do because they need money. If they didn't need money would those jobs still get done. Trash collection? Construction work? Hotel cleaners? Janitors? Farmers, Grocery Store stockers, truckers, nurses, sales clerks, .... Sure they'd get more than "Basic" but if they knew they were housed and feed and got medical service until death if they did absolutely nothing how many would choose to do absolutely nothing? Would it be enough the world would be a much worse place to live? Would it be enough that the price of all those services would double, triple, quadruple raising the prices of all the related services and the amount needed for UBI?
I don't like the idea of people suffering jobs they hate but I'm really glad and privileged they choose to do them.
So the solution is to continue using suffering and historic injustice to force people into doing stuff they don’t want to do - “or else”? I don’t think so. In India, even middle class families can afford a part time house maid because the latter’s salaries are insanely low thanks to cruel supply/demand dynamics and poverty; the same family, after moving to a developed country, would just do the chores themselves. It leads to a more equitable society.
So someone else should pay for you to sit around doing new hobbies? Glad you are having a good time, but how can you not view what you do as lazy from the eyes of society? There is no free lunch; the money is coming from somewhere.
By saying what you said, you just proved why the people were dissenting the idea of UBI in the first place. If people do exactly what you did, there would be no innovation and progress. People will end up living off of the ones who do the actual work. There will come a time when no one will want to do any work. Then what would happen? You will return to where you started from!
I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panicking about my business. When I accepted the fate of my business, I chilled out and just hung out with my kids. These past few months were amazing. I loathe finding a new job now. Instead, I’ve built a mechanical keyboard, explored streaming, learned how to cook, read useless books, and learned how to be present.
I see the choice of UBI as: “do I toil away for the wealthy class? Or do I took away for myself?” No way will I toil for someone else if I had a choice.