Split UBI - Split From Breakdown In Civil Order

[bilby]

Being born doesn't entitle you to the fruit of someone else's labor.

Yes. Unproductive people should just die. Is there an ice flow somewhere nearby where we can drop off some of those people?

HEY! You can't go around saying stuff like that

... it's ice floe.

 

[ZiprHead]

I bow to the correction.

 

[Toni]

You lower the reward, people do less.

Observation suggests the opposite. The hardest workers are the lowest paid.

Yep, those incredibly dedicated hardworking fast food employees.

On what are you basing your observations? And what do you mean by "hard working"?

Out of curiosity, have you ever done work in fields? I mean, tilling, planting, harvesting? Lots of our food crops rely heavily on mostly very low paid field workers. It’s incredibly difficult, physically punishing work. So is a lot of factory work and any industrial labor—and often very physically punishing. So is mining of any kind. So is working on utility lines. And frankly so is working in food service at any level, working in a nursing home, working as a nurse in many settings and dozens more occupations I haven’t mentioned.

The thing about all of those jobs: they are often jobs that have unreliable hours or are seasonal. They are typically very physically demanding, punishing even. So when 20 or 20 years worth of punishing work and cumulative injuries and the resulting arthritis make it difficult or impossible to continue in the work by the time the worker is in their early 50’s, these workers now must rely on inadequate SS and disability because it is very difficult or impossible for such a worker to get new training for another career—physically and economically but also it’s pretty hard to say, go to law school if you have to begin by earning your GED when you are 53. Or accounting or lots of less physically demanding but well paying jobs that require substantial formal education and training.

 

[Toni]

Being born doesn't entitle you to the fruit of someone else's labor.

Yes. Unproductive people should just die. Is there an ice flow somewhere nearby where we can drop off some of those people?

HEY! You can't go around saying stuff like that

... it's ice floe.

I dunno. I’ve told my kids that was what I wanted when I’m old and crippled up and unable to live on my own. Just put me on a piece of ice and lost me out to sea….

Of course the big flaw in that plan is global warming will make it very expensive to buy a bit of ice floe to the useless…

 

[ZiprHead]

You lower the reward, people do less.

Observation suggests the opposite. The hardest workers are the lowest paid.

Yep, those incredibly dedicated hardworking fast food employees.

On what are you basing your observations? And what do you mean by "hard working"?

Have you worked in fast food recently? It sure sounds like you haven't. From what I've seen, almost every employee needs to do three jobs all at once.

 

[laughing dog]

I showed that an UBI of 15K appears sustainable.

The hell you did. Your poverty level UBI would cost the ENTIRE GOVERNMENT REVENUE to fund!

Do you have a rational point?

 

[bilby]

I showed that an UBI of 15K appears sustainable.

The hell you did. Your poverty level UBI would cost the ENTIRE GOVERNMENT REVENUE to fund!

Do you have a rational point?

Apparently that government revenue is fixed, and that it's literally unthinkable that taxes could ever rise without the world coming to an end.

 

[Toni]

You lower the reward, people do less.

Observation suggests the opposite. The hardest workers are the lowest paid.

Yep, those incredibly dedicated hardworking fast food employees.

On what are you basing your observations? And what do you mean by "hard working"?

Have you worked in fast food recently? It sure sounds like you haven't. From what I've seen, almost every employee needs to do three jobs all at once.

All work in eating establishments is difficult and stressful.

 

[Gospel]

All work in eating establishments is difficult and stressful.

Especially when interacting with customers who underestimate the value of your skills, believing that your work requires no skill.

 

[Elixir]

I think I found yore problem...

 

[laughing dog]

I showed that an UBI of 15K appears sustainable.

The hell you did. Your poverty level UBI would cost the ENTIRE GOVERNMENT REVENUE to fund!

Do you have a rational point?

Apparently that government revenue is fixed, and that it's literally unthinkable that taxes could ever rise without the world coming to an end.

Exactly. In Europe as a whole, tax revenue is around 40% of GDP  List_of_sovereign_states_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP) In the USA, it is about 27% of GDP. The European economy is proven sustainable which suggests that my example is sustainable.. Whether my example of an UBI is achievable or desirable is a different question.

 

[Gospel]

I think I found yore problem...

View attachment 45138

The tax system is structured in a way that heavily taxes individuals to the benefit of corporations.

 

[Emily Lake]

Agreed. UBI would take out a decent chunk of the labor pool.

UBI would absolutely destroy the labour pool for shitty, low-paying jobs that employers can only fill because people are desperate to keep a roof over their head.

It should be our goal, as a society, to annihilate those jobs.

If employers can't get workers to work in shitty jobs then they will need to improve working conditions. With a UBI, workers will no longer suffer workplaces which have a callous disregard for employee safety and dignity.

Or allow small businesses to employ people who would not have to try to live on starvation wages.

It would provide subsistence for people while they are trying to launch a business

UBI could significantly improve market competition simply by making small businesses more resilient and able to survive even against corporate competitors.

(Assuming those small businesses deserve to survive. Fuck small business tyrants.)

We don’t like small businesses and we don’t like larger “public ally traded companies. Do we like any companies?!!

What we don’t like is people not being able to afford to live in decent housing,

Neither do I. And I think that we should address gentrification, real estate investors, mortgage lenders, and usurous landlords. I think we should also encourage employers to move their operations to suburban and borderline rural areas to allow for more affordable living options for their employees.

excellent t health care

And I think we should address the abusively high costs that hospitals and doctors (especially specialists) charge fo their services so that they can afford to only work twice a week and have that house-on-a-golf course. We should also address the insane levels of profit margin that pharmaceutical companies make, as well as the loopholes that allow them to effectively re-patent the exact same active ingredients because they changed the color of the tablet and other such ridiculousness. And we should definitely take a look at the profiteering involved in medical device and supplies companies, as well as the exorbitant costs of interventions we spend on extending life by six months for terminal patients.

and excellent education

And I 100% support gutting the current means by which education is funding, and eliminating the role that local property value plays in sub-par education for people living in low income areas, because that's a downright travesty.

and a secure retirement.

Agreed, although I don't have a pet approach for that one.

We also strongly support a strong, healthy environment.

What I oppose is anyone being able to amass so much wealth that they effectively are above the law.

I don't oppose anyone being able to amass wealth. I do, however, oppose the way laws are applied, and the ways in which our legal system favors the wealthy. I don't think the solution to that is to remove wealth, I think it's to re-evaluate and strengthen our justice system.

I actually think it's critical to a thriving economy to have some degree of income inequality. We've got to have some people with enough money that they're willing to take chances with it - that's how we get investments in start-ups, innovation, etc. If income is too evenly spread, the marginal value of a dollar remains relatively high, so that people will generally prefer to spend that dollar on themselves and their current quality of life. In short, you've got to have some Musks in the world in order to get Space-X. Ideally, we'd have a smallish group of exceptionally wealthy people, with highly diverse interests that they're willing to invest in.

There are challenges, of course. One is that there's a risk of getting a small group of highly wealthy people who all have the same interests - then you get over-investment in a narrower range of fields with only marginal differences in outcomes between those investments, and entire sectors of possible innovation get ignored due to lack of interest. Another risk is that you end up with some of those highly wealthy people being uninterested in investment at all, and then they're essentially Scrooge McDuck (the Waltons are a prime example of this). I don't know where the balance point is.

 

[Emily Lake]

I used to be opposed to UBI but life happened and I know a number of people who are barely—barely hanging on. I see the effects of poverty reflected in my community and have seen enough to see the major culprit being very low wages, and very high profits for a handful of people who work hard to starve public education and who don’t get tooth and nail against anything that might increase their taxes or increase their liability for environmental damage their business causes or in any way inhibits their ability to do exactly what they want, when they want.

I see those things too. And I think we need to overhaul several of our systems to address them. But I don't see UBI specifically as being a feasible solution. In particular because I don't see UBI as being long-term sustainable. And though I disagree with Loren on a lot of things, on this I don't: It's a trap!

Once we switch over to a UBI framework, I don't think there's a plausible way to roll it back unless it's implemented in an extremely "slow roll" fashion. And if that UBI framework hits a tipping point of too many people leaving the labor market or the tax rates becoming too high... it will collapse. That's not a small risk.

I have zero problem taxing UBI payments to millionaires or even to very comfortably middle class people like myself.

See, I do - I think it absolutely destroys the entire fundamental concept of UBI. The core principle of UBI is that it's UNIVERSAL - everyone gets that income, regardless of need, and it's a guaranteed stipend that every single citizen is entitled to. In order for it to have any appeal whatsoever, the tax brackets need to align with the UBI disbursement, and incomes up to the UBI amount must be taxed at 0%. That UBI has to be free, or the entire concept is destroyed from step one. In short, UBI must be exempt from taxation for the scheme to be sound.

I don't object to increasing the rates on higher tax brackets. In fact, for UBI to work *at all* tax rates are going to have to go up, and not just on the uber wealthy. They're going to have to go up on the middle class as well. The major question is how much they're going to have to go up, and what impact the combination of UBI and reduced after-tax income will have on people's decisions to stay in the labor pool.

 

[Toni]

Apparently soy do have a problem with people amassing wealth: you don’t like doctors who charge high fees.

So doctors should not be millionaires but….Musk should? Bezos should? Doctors save lives. Bezos abuses employees and vendors to amass BILLIONS. These are not the same thing.

 

[Elixir]

I actually think it's critical to a thriving economy to have some degree of income inequality.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees.
The whole debate centers on how much income and wealth inequality is desirable, how much is tolerable, how much is destructive to a society and how the inequality is represented among various groups.

 

[Emily Lake]

Under the current system, being rich certainly seems to entitle you to the fruits of other people’s labor—and it seems that you’re just fine with that, I guess.

Come on, Toni. Don't play that game. You know me better than that.

 

[Emily Lake]

Being born doesn't entitle you to the fruit of someone else's labor.

Yes. Unproductive people should just die. Is there an ice flow somewhere nearby where we can drop off some of those people?

JFC, this is some brainless rhetoric. You're only half a step away from spouting off that I want to genocide people who don't work, so just go ahead and put that toe over the line, you know you need that daily fix of seething hatred.

 

[Emily Lake]

Do you know they already do it in Alaska? They just don't call it UBI. Alaska is a very conservative state, but don't ever try to take their UBI away from them.

It's not UBI at all. First off, it's not funded by taxes, it's funded by sales of oil from the Alaskan Pipeline, which is deemed to be owned by the citizenry of the state. It's a mutually held asset, so the profits from that asset are mutually distributed.

Your inappropriate rhetoric is akin to saying that members of mutually held companies (like USAA AUto Insurance) who get a share of the profits each year are getting UBI. Hell, it's like saying that tangerines and oranges and carrots are all the same color, therefore carrots are oranges.

 

[Emily Lake]

Being born doesn't entitle you to the fruit of someone else's labor.

Tell that to your kids.

I think you'll find that it absolutely and unequivocally does.

Let me know when your neighbors 3 doors down are paying for your kid's college. Don't be daft.