UBI

How are your feels about a Universal Basic Income? Some people say that it will make people lazy and not want to work. other people say that people will still want money for entertainment goods even if they have food and housing taken care of and therefore work. another concern is that without government regulation cost of rent and food supplies would climb to make the UBI useless. this topic is both supported and reviled on both the left and right sides. what are your views?

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care2.com/causes/minimum-wage-workers-cant-afford-to-live-anywhere-in-the-u-s.html
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/basic-income-too-basic-not-radical-enough/
economicshelp.org/microessays/equilibrium/price-elasticity-demand/
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bandaids on a cancer patient

It's an excuse to gut existing welfare programs. Also it will likely cause a huge inflationary spiral.

The coming mass wave of job losses, without a response from the ruling classes, would inevitably lead to their downfall. They are trying to quell this, just like they have for years with welfare.

It runs out with capitalism. Once automation starts seriously hitting, the concept of spending money to buy other commodities becomes a task of governments printing money to give to people who then give it to capitalists as pure profit and then it stays there. But seeing as the rich no longer have use for the money, why would they want it?

It's good if it's with a planned economy. In a free market the prices of goods might just be raised.

It raises prices and encourages participation in the black market.

Most UBI schemes I've seen considered will result in a higher 'welfare' bill than current. Pensioners currently get a max allowance of £500/month. UBI should be about 2/3 the national minimum wage IMO. Enough to live on but if you want that shiny new iPhone, you'll have to work part time.

The best thing about UBI is that it is going to make class distinctions glaringly obvious.


What is the minimum wage there?

Its a bandaid on a serious gunshot wound. Can only slow the bleeding. Support it until the revolution happens.

Problem with it is, it relies on taxes to be funded, but the wealthy fight (sucessfully) to get their taxes lowered all the time. It would eventually bankrupt in our current system, just like social security is now.

Currently £6.70 per hour for adults. So at 40 hour weeks is roughly £1200/month.

You can make the wealthy pay a bigger share of taxes if you really want to.
It just takes the political will.

How so?

This. Raising taxes isn't impossible. They've been much higher in the past.

UBI = practically inexhaustible strike-fund.

I don't buy the inflation argument. The whole point of the analysis behind a left UBI is that a UBI is practically a necessity to avoid deflation, and with it a crisis of capital accumulation and a crisis of social reproduction. With automation of the production process, capitalists spend less on labour (and this is a generalised phenomenon which isn't solved by 're-skilling') leading to unemployment and 'underemployment' (wages lower than workers' skills would usually merit, part-time work, short-term employment which leads to alternation between a 'real' skilled job and menial work). Even if this situation 'equilibriates' and inflation in capital markets alongside deflation in labour markets causes bosses to employ labour in place of machines, this will still lead to a chronically insecure situation in which, because of volatile switching between machines and labour everyone is liable to lose all of their income at any time – and people start dropping like flies. (And this kind of hovering around a labour-machinery equilibrium is unlikely because labour can't be reconfigured as easily as machinery to create hitherto unimagined increases in productivity. And the production of machinery becomes itself mechanized.) With workers making no money, consumer spending plummets, massive deflation. So now in the UK we have a non-inflationary economic recovery – we had the same in the 90s. And since the financial crash debt can't make up for the shortfall. UBI is sort of like 'credit without debit': it finances spending without creating massive instability.

Why would an UBI cause inflation? It doesn't require new money to be printed but existing money to be transferred.

I understand that you're British, but in America you can't live at the minimum wage, even if you're full time. 2/3 of that would be a waste.
care2.com/causes/minimum-wage-workers-cant-afford-to-live-anywhere-in-the-u-s.html

Minor point: UK minimum wage is far below a living wage too.

Not when you're on a spaceship :^)

More money being circulated more quickly and chasing limited supply of goods

Remind me, what is living wage calculated at atm? Is it still £9 or is that just London? Cause to be fair, you can live relatively comfortably on minimum wage, at least single and without kids.

It's £6.50 or £5.13 if you're under 21.

Well this is the crux of the matter isn't it? Goods that are already scarce (luxury goods?) will likely go up in price. Things that are over-produced to the point of severe wastage will be unaffected as the producers will still see an increase in profit through sheer sales volume.

Correction: it's gone up a little. 25+: £7.20 21-24: £6.95 18-20: £5.55 Under 18: £4.00.

Still very low.

Shit
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/basic-income-too-basic-not-radical-enough/

You can only assume inflation from a rising money supply with static output and equilibrium across sectors – structural impossibilities under capitalism. The whole point is that demand for consumer goods will fall through the floor as aggregate wages go down.

'Having' a UBI isn't a pivot for radical agitation, since it's practically a necessity to prevent a chronic crisis of overproduction or successively deeper financial crises (if debt continues to play the same role in making up for lost income relative to growth). The question is whether we can make it so that this socialisation of expenditure on consumer goods can be geared towards comprehensive, egalitarian social reproduction (people eating and sleeping when they need to) rather than market death camps.

Certain sectors will charge more because they can, as the PED of different products will be altered. I doubt the luxury goods market will be too disrupted by people recieving UBI. Maybe the payday loans, pawnshops and budget retailers will take a hit.


It's not just the money supply, it's the speed in which it goes through the economy. Assuming you take idle wealth off the rich and give it to the poor and then assuming all spend it at once then it will definitely cause inflation, as the money was just sitting there before, and not circulating.
It can be managed perfectly though, Mark Blyth explained it in a video on youtube I can't find.

I was asking about living wage.

Seriously. That it isn't FALC NAO is not an argument. At all.


Lets take these one by one.


Shit idea, way worse than UBI. Given the main factor in growing support for UBI is automatiuon, what are these guarenteed jobs going to be? And how do we stop it from devolving into mandatory McJobs for you boss and landlord, ie neo-serfdum?


I ask again. What is loving wage? Cause if it's £9/hour as I seem to remember, that will be the minimum wage by 2020 in the UK.


And you people call UBI magical thinking… Why not reduce my 40 hour week to two 15s and a ten. Look three people are now employed. But the wage bill is up three-fold and productivity is unchanged.


Which is literally what fucked the economy as hard as it is. The pension was meant to sustain you from finishing work to your deathbed. At the time this meant a stipend for what, five or ten years? Now twenty years plus is common. Unsustainable.

Hadn't seen this term before. You mean this?

economicshelp.org/microessays/equilibrium/price-elasticity-demand/


I don't see how this is applicable to common consumer goods?

100% for it.

Would a UBI be useful within a market socialist economy? Perhaps to reduce the negative effects of any unemployment?

Yes to inflate the underground economy.

No, its only effective way to combat welfare cliff.

I want it

This. Everyone's rent will be magically raised to whatever the government is handing out.