UBI, or universal basic income, is a form of direct cash assistance to help the most vulnerable get back on their feet. A new study in Denver suggests it works.
  • Farnswirth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1427·
    1 year ago

    There are two major concerns I have with UBI.

    1. It’s highly inflationary.

    2. 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.

      • Chunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        414·
        1 year ago

        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.

          • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            16·
            1 year ago

            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.

              • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                16·
                1 year ago

                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.

              • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                17·
                1 year ago

                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.

          • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            26·
            1 year ago

            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.

          • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            15·
            1 year ago

            We cannot afford to ditch over 50% of the budget to replace it with a UBI that won’t produce much if any benefit?

              • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                24·
                1 year ago

                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.

                • grff@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  12·
                  1 year ago

                  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

    • Eheran@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      Do we have any sort of previous example of this happening? Was this ever tested? If no: a test is seemingly well worth it.

          • cricket97@lemmy.worldEnglish
            14·
            1 year ago

            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.

        • cricket97@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          1 year ago

          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.

        • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          25·
          1 year ago

          The entire US was given checks during the pandemic, did it make you lazy?

          I mean, I spent a year wearing sweat pants and hardly leaving my house.

            • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              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.

        • Gigan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          18·
          1 year ago

          Fuck yeah it did. I was making the same on unemployment as I would have being at work. I wanted to stay laid off.

      • Peaty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • centof@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago
      1. It’s highly inflationary.
      1. False. It is only inflationary if the the government prints money to fund it. If instead the government funds it by cutting unnecessary spending or increasing tax revenue in some way than it is not inflationary. There is the same amount of money in circulation but it is just moving between hands instead of staying in a bank account.
      • Farnswirth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        cutting unnecessary spending or increasing tax revenue

        You are technically correct, but in a practical sense: lol good luck with that.

    • snooggums@kbin.social
      51·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • BOMBS@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago
      1. It’s highly inflationary.

      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.

      1. It fosters dependency, and it’s an economic-political death spiral. People on UBI vote for those who support higher UBI.

      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 🔁