Should UBI Replace all Welfare Systems?

[Steamtyme]

Just a heads up. The Ontario pilot program is being scrapped early by the incoming provincial government.

This program was part of my basis for why politicians will be the downfall of a reasonable test or Implementation.

Don't worry though they are pushing to bring back "buck a beer"... or to  non Canadians 1 dollar beer.

[Mometaskers]

While it sounds nice getting "free" money especially if you're not making much, could this still lead back to the same problems of dependency? You get the same amount of money whether you work or not anyway.

People might be motivated to better themselves if actual welfare is cut off but should these people fail to save up and end up in emergencies, it's likely the other taxpayers would still have to break their fall.

If we ever get to using UBI I hope it's some sort of blockchain system where every detail of expenses are tracked and the gov't can block certain purchases or impose limits or outright cut off the money if it's being wasted.

This is incompatible with lax or unrestricted immigration of course. I know you restricted it to US citizens, just saying.

Cutting out welfare might probably cut down on illegal immigration more than any wall, me thinks. I mean, look at those men with multiple wives migrating to Europe and living off welfare they are getting through the children and not working. Many of those were already in there before the rise of ISIS.

But a fundamental rule of government is that no programs are allowed to be considered which are not capable of supporting graft, corruption and political favoritism.

Unfortunately. That's how the system perpetuate itself. Sure there are honest politicians but many would definitely try to take advantage, especially since they are the ones who write the laws and implement them.

[BADecker]

While it sounds nice getting "free" money especially if you're not making much, could this still lead back to the same problems of dependency? You get the same amount of money whether you work or not anyway.

People might be motivated to better themselves if actual welfare is cut off but should these people fail to save up and end up in emergencies, it's likely the other taxpayers would still have to break their fall.

If we ever get to using UBI I hope it's some sort of blockchain system where every detail of expenses are tracked and the gov't can block certain purchases or impose limits or outright cut off the money if it's being wasted.

This is incompatible with lax or unrestricted immigration of course. I know you restricted it to US citizens, just saying.

Cutting out welfare might probably cut down on illegal immigration more than any wall, me thinks. I mean, look at those men with multiple wives migrating to Europe and living off welfare they are getting through the children and not working. Many of those were already in there before the rise of ISIS.

But a fundamental rule of government is that no programs are allowed to be considered which are not capable of supporting graft, corruption and political favoritism.

Unfortunately. That's how the system perpetuate itself. Sure there are honest politicians but many would definitely try to take advantage, especially since they are the ones who write the laws and implement them.

A couple points that people neglect or ignore that are important to this issue:
1. The banking system is a legal world Ponzi;
2. A person is any document that reflects a human being or some other person.

The government set up the banking Ponzi back in 1913. All Ponzi's need an influx of people/persons to remain "alive." So far corporations (persons) and world people (persons) are the things that are keeping the Federal Reserve banking Ponzi alive. But we are running out of people. If suddenly there is a national required UBI, there will suddenly be a whole lot of persons that will be receiving additional funds, while inflation can grow, again, to scoop up more of the property of the world. These persons are the things that are keeping the banking Ponzi alive.

What is a person? It is paperwork with your name on it. Your driver's license might identify you, but it is a person. Your phone bill name is a person. Your electric bill name is a person. The name on each of your bank accounts might identify you, but they are not you. They are persons.

How can you tell? Get out your electric bill agreement that you signed up for electricity with. It has your name and address on it. But it is not you. Get your kitchen butcher knife out, and stab it. It doesn't bleed like you would if you were stabbed the same way.

UBI will give the government and banking system more breathing room by creating a whole new bunch of legitimate persons. And that is what they need to keep a Ponzi alive. We barely understand what is going on... while they take up ownership of the world.

[GlumMasterpiece]

Just a heads up. The Ontario pilot program is being scrapped early by the incoming provincial government.

This program was part of my basis for why politicians will be the downfall of a reasonable test or Implementation.

Don't worry though they are pushing to bring back "buck a beer"... or to  non Canadians 1 dollar beer.

Dang, you're right. I should have dug a little deeper. I found an article about the explanation: https://globalnews.ca/news/4365399/ontario-cancels-basic-income-pilot-project/. It looks like payments will actually end this month. They suggest that the program discouraged people from finding work. Participants seem to be refuting that claim though. They explain how UBI gave them the opportunity to go back to school while keeping a part-time job. They are saying that it's probably got more to do with cutting the budget. It seems a bit ridiculous to cancel the pilot program. They could at least see it out to get some good data.

If we ever get to using UBI I hope it's some sort of blockchain system where every detail of expenses are tracked and the gov't can block certain purchases or impose limits or outright cut off the money if it's being wasted.

Would you really want the government to have that much control in your life? That does not sound like a good idea at all to me.

[merchantofzeny]

....
I would like to point out that the US is constantly digging itself further into debt. IT would be more accurate to say, "It's not like we're going to be digging further into debt any more quickly."

I would like to point out that the freeloaders are constantly looking for more ways to get free stuff. It would be more accurate to say "It's not like the $10,000 of free money a year is the end, it's only the beginning!"

I can already imagine...

"Oh, I'm already out of money and unemployed but I need to have an emergency surgery done. Would you really be so cruel to not help me? It's just money, I will pay you back, I swear! Don't be so heartless!  "

[theymos]

I can already imagine...

"Oh, I'm already out of money and unemployed but I need to have an emergency surgery done. Would you really be so cruel to not help me? It's just money, I will pay you back, I swear! Don't be so heartless!  "

The more we talk about it, the more it seems like it would be much less simple than was originally proposed. The idea of just giving every person an equal amount of money every month quickly became something else. What ago should they start receiving it? What about then they're too old to work anymore to supplement the UBI? How do you determine how old is too old to work? What if somebody is married? What if somebody has kids to support? What if somebody already makes a lot of money? What is somebody is from a poor area and another person lives in an expensive city? It seems like we'd still need big government organizations to regulate it all. 

Right, that's why while I think that it's a good idea in principle, it'll probably never be done, and almost certainly never be done in a way which is a net positive. The point is to reduce the size of government (in number of regulations, government employees, etc.) and encourage some amount of personal responsibility (at least the responsibility to ask private charities for money if necessary), but instead you're going to end up with a huge mess of limitations and exceptions which would rival the US tax code in size.


I'd be theoretically OK IMO to progressively phase out UBI at very high income levels, but I wouldn't particularly support that because it requires the government to know your income, and I strongly favor eliminating the income tax. Taxation is theft and should be totally eliminated, but income tax is the worst type; it'd be better to replace income tax with sales tax and/or property tax. (If there is an income tax, then you can do negative income tax, a similar system to UBI supported by Milton Friedman.)

The amount should not depend on marital status. If two or more people are able to have a better standard of living by living together, then that's fine. Charles Murray suggests that his proposed $13k/year is not usually enough to live alone, and would require either marriage or rooming.

The amount should not depend on location. If costs are too high where you live, then you should move. If costs are low where you live, then that's fine. People without much money should go to low-cost areas; it's like supply & demand.

Minimum wage is basically universally agreed amongst economists to be counter-productive to everyone. The only thing that it can possibly do is prevent two people from making a deal which they otherwise would've considered worthwhile. It decreases employment and has very little effect on wages. With UBI, even the (totally false) justification for minimum wage that it's necessary for people to get enough money to live would be removed.

You raise a really good point about how much we are working. People work so much these days, but we clearly don't need it.

This is something that also bothers me. People always frame prosperity/welfare as needing to find a well-paying 9-to-5 job, but is it really necessary for people to work so much? 100 years ago it was common for a single person to support two adults and several children on his own, but now it's common for two parents to work full-time and still feel squeezed. Standards of living have increased, of course, and materialism also plays a big factor, but the whole culture seems wrong. It's probably also due in large part to the government uselessly consuming so much of the economy.

Especially with increasing automation, people are going to have to spend more time on free-form, entrepreneurial sorts of things, and that's good. There's no need to force people into soul-sucking 9-to-5 jobs. Already, I suspect that if you're earning less than $30k/year in the US, then you could probably make more money by becoming an independent contractor of some sort, even if you're completely unskilled.

I fear that governments will create near-pointless 9-to-5 jobs as a form of welfare (like eg. the New Deal CCC) in order to guarantee a "living wage", which would be just unbelievably stupid. Just send people a check and the vast majority of them will on their own do much more useful and fulfilling work.

[Mometaskers]

A couple points that people neglect or ignore that are important to this issue:
1. The banking system is a legal world Ponzi;
2. A person is any document that reflects a human being or some other person.

Thanks for mentioning. Even more relevant to the topic is the most social security program is practically a Ponzi scheme. Straight out off Paul Samuelson's mouth...

“The beauty about social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in. . . . Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population. More important, with real incomes growing at some 3 per cent per year, the taxable base upon which benefits rest in any period are much greater than the taxes paid historically by the generation now retired. . . . A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived.”

[criptix]

While it sounds nice getting "free" money especially if you're not making much, could this still lead back to the same problems of dependency? You get the same amount of money whether you work or not anyway.

People might be motivated to better themselves if actual welfare is cut off but should these people fail to save up and end up in emergencies, it's likely the other taxpayers would still have to break their fall.

If we ever get to using UBI I hope it's some sort of blockchain system where every detail of expenses are tracked and the gov't can block certain purchases or impose limits or outright cut off the money if it's being wasted.

This is incompatible with lax or unrestricted immigration of course. I know you restricted it to US citizens, just saying.

Cutting out welfare might probably cut down on illegal immigration more than any wall, me thinks. I mean, look at those men with multiple wives migrating to Europe and living off welfare they are getting through the children and not working. Many of those were already in there before the rise of ISIS.

But a fundamental rule of government is that no programs are allowed to be considered which are not capable of supporting graft, corruption and political favoritism.

Unfortunately. That's how the system perpetuate itself. Sure there are honest politicians but many would definitely try to take advantage, especially since they are the ones who write the laws and implement them.

You know what the U stands for in UBI?

Unconditional


Anyway if i was the world leader i would just remove welfare completely and sent all the shitters to mexico, africa or some other shit 3rd world country where they die after a while.

Population is too big anyway.

Better let 500 million people live as gods then 7 billion people like beggars.

That western 6 year old mentality of everyone deserves love, peace and money is retarded.


 


Edit: Whoever doesnt agree is 100% on welfare

Edit2: @theymos Only stupid people have soul-sucking 9-5  jobs which doesnt earn them enough.
Its no wonder anyway because half of the population has an iq less then 90.

Good paid manual labor is mostly done by robot nowadays.

[suchmoon]

You know what the U stands for in UBI?

Unconditional

"Universal" actually.

Anyway if i was the world leader i would just remove welfare completely and sent all the shitters to mexico, africa or some other shit 3rd world country where they die after a while.

Population is too big anyway.

Better let 500 million people live as gods then 7 billion people like beggars.

That western 6 year old mentality of everyone deserves love, peace and money is retarded.

It already pretty much works that way. The majority of world's population live in shit (and refuse to die contrary to your expectations) compared to the top 500 million so that doesn't solve anything.

[GlumMasterpiece]

You raise a really good point about how much we are working. People work so much these days, but we clearly don't need it.

This is something that also bothers me. People always frame prosperity/welfare as needing to find a well-paying 9-to-5 job, but is it really necessary for people to work so much? 100 years ago it was common for a single person to support two adults and several children on his own, but now it's common for two parents to work full-time and still feel squeezed. Standards of living have increased, of course, and materialism also plays a big factor, but the whole culture seems wrong. It's probably also due in large part to the government uselessly consuming so much of the economy.

Especially with increasing automation, people are going to have to spend more time on free-form, entrepreneurial sorts of things, and that's good. There's no need to force people into soul-sucking 9-to-5 jobs. Already, I suspect that if you're earning less than $30k/year in the US, then you could probably make more money by becoming an independent contractor of some sort, even if you're completely unskilled.

I fear that governments will create near-pointless 9-to-5 jobs as a form of welfare (like eg. the New Deal CCC) in order to guarantee a "living wage", which would be just unbelievably stupid. Just send people a check and the vast majority of them will on their own do much more useful and fulfilling work.

I am totally with you on this. I'm not sure if standards of living would be the right way to put it. I think it's just a culture of of needless consumerism. I remember really an article of a family of 4 that comfortable lives on $25,000 per year (though they make more) compared with a family of 4 where the father is a doctor and the mother is a dentist. I think the latter family was making over $350,000/year. Of course the latter family was also that it just wasn't enough to finish building their million dollar home and pay for their kid's private schools and nannies etc. It's just ridiculous how people don't even think twice to spend more than they earn.

I had another idea that I think may apply well to all this. What if there was just a limit placed on how much you could work to, say 20 hours/week? There would immediately be twice as many jobs available. We could raise wages and focus on increasing productivity. We already produce much more than we need and waste so much.

[Steamtyme]

*Already corrected*

Anyway if i was the world leader i would just remove welfare completely and sent all the shitters to mexico, africa or some other shit 3rd world country where they die after a while.
Population is too big anyway.
Better let 500 million people live as gods then 7 billion people like beggars.
That western 6 year old mentality of everyone deserves love, peace and money is retarded.

I'm waiting for you to announce the annual competition where all these people you feel don't have the right to exist in your utopia, can compete for enough food to scrape by.
I wonder would you even say "May the odds be ever in your favor"

So of these 500 million gods who is going to be performing manual labor roles, fixing roads, or clearing the sewers? Not the gods surely!!! Oh wait you'll have a hardy group that have survived their death sentance to bestow a "lifetime of servitude upon". Sounds great  

In case you only look forward and do not consider history as an indication of human behavior, this generally leads to the "peasant" or "undesirables" giving their lives the same value you do while hoards of them give that life to drag the "gods" into the streets and ......

Edit: Whoever doesnt agree is 100% on welfare

Wow, I wonder where my check is... must be a huge amount of backpay, here checky, checky, checky.

Edit2: @theymos Only stupid people have soul-sucking 9-5  jobs which doesnt earn them enough.
Its no wonder anyway because half of the population has an iq less then 90.

Good paid manual labor is mostly done by robot nowadays.

Or they do what they can in a system they do not feel they can advance in, while still wanting to provide for themselves or their family. Would you rather they quit and seek welfare? Some of those people do find a drive or see an opportunity and find a way to be happy working a 9-5 or some variation. I was about to say these are not the individuals we are here to discuss, but imagine what a UBI could do for them, pretty much( insert all benefits previously stated)

I have worked around these robots, they are great because usually you need to employ 2 people for each of them to be able to provide mechanical repairs or technical troubleshooting.

[criptix]

You know what the U stands for in UBI?

Unconditional

"Universal" actually.

True story - even though google finds Uncoditional Basic Income too, because one of the basic principles of universal basic income is unconditionality.

Regarding myself i was translating it from german where it is called "Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen (BGE)" (engl. universal basic income) and "Bedingungslos" means unconditional in english.

Anyway if i was the world leader i would just remove welfare completely and sent all the shitters to mexico, africa or some other shit 3rd world country where they die after a while.

Population is too big anyway.

Better let 500 million people live as gods then 7 billion people like beggars.

That western 6 year old mentality of everyone deserves love, peace and money is retarded.

It already pretty much works that way. The majority of world's population live in shit (and refuse to die contrary to your expectations) compared to the top 500 million so that doesn't solve anything.

Whoops  

*Already corrected*

Anyway if i was the world leader i would just remove welfare completely and sent all the shitters to mexico, africa or some other shit 3rd world country where they die after a while.
Population is too big anyway.
Better let 500 million people live as gods then 7 billion people like beggars.
That western 6 year old mentality of everyone deserves love, peace and money is retarded.

I'm waiting for you to announce the annual competition where all these people you feel don't have the right to exist in your utopia, can compete for enough food to scrape by.
I wonder would you even say "May the odds be ever in your favor"

Let the Hunger Games begin  

So of these 500 million gods who is going to be performing manual labor roles, fixing roads, or clearing the sewers? Not the gods surely!!! Oh wait you'll have a hardy group that have survived their death sentance to bestow a "lifetime of servitude upon". Sounds great  

You see, if we wouldnt need to spend trillions on garbage every year we would have AI supported Robots everywhere that would do everything.

In case you only look forward and do not consider history as an indication of human behavior, this generally leads to the "peasant" or "undesirables" giving their lives the same value you do while hoards of them give that life to drag the "gods" into the streets and ......

Ah history - you know what i think mostly of that?

New day, same shit.

Edit: Whoever doesnt agree is 100% on welfare

Wow, I wonder where my check is... must be a huge amount of backpay, here checky, checky, checky.

I knew it!

Edit2: @theymos Only stupid people have soul-sucking 9-5  jobs which doesnt earn them enough.
Its no wonder anyway because half of the population has an iq less then 90.

Good paid manual labor is mostly done by robot nowadays.

Or they do what they can in a system they do not feel they can advance in, while still wanting to provide for themselves or their family. Would you rather they quit and seek welfare? Some of those people do find a drive or see an opportunity and find a way to be happy working a 9-5 or some variation. I was about to say these are not the individuals we are here to discuss, but imagine what a UBI could do for them, pretty much( insert all benefits previously stated)

I have worked around these robots, they are great because usually you need to employ 2 people for each of them to be able to provide mechanical repairs or technical troubleshooting.

(Depends on the robots and industry - i dont think we need to go into detail here but in general you can say robots are more efficient and less expensive then humans (where they are used and will be used in the future), else nobody would use robots.)

Or we just deport them to mexico and africa!

 

[lightcar]

UBI has to be implemented because of rhe rise of robots and automation, if the rich people don't agree there will be mass riots and revolution.

[BADecker]

We need to stop UBI, because then people won't have enough money to buy the things that robots and AI make, and the robot system will collapse for lack of funds and anyone buying their products. Rather, the people will have to go back to producing things for themselves, and trading with each other. This will help eliminate fiat, and Bitcoin might become the standard method for money trade.

[suchmoon]

UBI has to be implemented because of rhe rise of robots and automation, if the rich people don't agree there will be mass riots and revolution.

Automation has been going on for decades if not centuries and there won't be an abrupt change but rather a gradual shift from stupid menial jobs that machines can do to jobs that humans are still better at. I don't think we will run out jobs in the next few hundred years just like we won't run out of people complaining that they can't make money doing what they learned 30 years ago.

[Thekool1s]

UBI has to be implemented because of rhe rise of robots and automation, if the rich people don't agree there will be mass riots and revolution.

Automation has been going on for decades if not centuries and there won't be an abrupt change but rather a gradual shift from stupid menial jobs that machines can do to jobs that humans are still better at. I don't think we will run out jobs in the next few hundred years just like we won't run out of people complaining that they can't make money doing what they learned 30 years ago.

But this time it's different tho. Would recommend you to watch this 15-minute gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

We will actually run out of most jobs in the next 5 decades thanks to AI and immutable databases (Blockchain).

[squatz1]

I'd be theoretically OK IMO to progressively phase out UBI at very high income levels, but I wouldn't particularly support that because it requires the government to know your income, and I strongly favor eliminating the income tax. Taxation is theft and should be totally eliminated, but income tax is the worst type; it'd be better to replace income tax with sales tax and/or property tax. (If there is an income tax, then you can do negative income tax, a similar system to UBI supported by Milton Friedman.)

I think the government is going to be able to know your income either way, because even if the Income tax is ever removed (it won't ever be, too much in tax revenue at this point) there is still payroll taxes with W-2's (and 1099s for independent contractors) that are going to report your income levels anyway.

Especially with increasing automation, people are going to have to spend more time on free-form, entrepreneurial sorts of things, and that's good. There's no need to force people into soul-sucking 9-to-5 jobs. Already, I suspect that if you're earning less than $30k/year in the US, then you could probably make more money by becoming an independent contractor of some sort, even if you're completely unskilled.

I fear that governments will create near-pointless 9-to-5 jobs as a form of welfare (like eg. the New Deal CCC) in order to guarantee a "living wage", which would be just unbelievably stupid. Just send people a check and the vast majority of them will on their own do much more useful and fulfilling work.

Governments will do this, and it is sad to see. But-- the average worker doesn't want to have to depend on how hard they have to work to gain money. They just want to go to work, stay for as long as they have to and collect their paycheck at the end of the week.

Entrepreneurs are a different breed of people in my view. They strive for greatness and they will dip into savings, loans, etc in order to make their dreams a reality.

We will actually run out of most jobs in the next 5 decades thanks to AI and immutable data courtesy of blockchain.

People have been saying we're going to run out of jobs for decades, I truly think it's going to take more time than this.

[Thekool1s]

People have been saying we're going to run out of jobs for decades, I truly think it's going to take more time than this.

Indeed the problem being, Most of the automation done in the last 5 decades or so was of mechanical "muscles", this time its different. We are talking about mechanical "minds". I will ask you to watch the video I mentioned above. It will explain what i am talking about.

[suchmoon]

But this time it's different tho. Would recommend you to watch this 15-minute gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

We will actually run out of most jobs in the next 5 decades thanks to AI and immutable databases (Blockchain).

"AI" is an overused buzzword that makes some (most?) people think it's going to be a drop-in replacement for a human. It's not. I will be shocked if in 5 decades we are able to develop machine learning to the level of a 3-year-old toddler. More likely though it will continue to be narrowly specialized, such as self-driving cars that may work reasonably well during daytime on well-marked roads in a well-mapped area with good wireless signal. There will still be plenty of humans doing the road marking and mapping and all that stuff.

Now look 5 decades back and I'm sure you'll find many jobs that no longer exist and probably even more jobs that were "invented" in that time period. Things change.

[KingScorpio]

This is going to be a long one, and I want people to be involved with this issue so I can hear all sides of the argument.

In the recent years, there has been a push from the right and the left to introduce a Universal Basic Income (UBI) -- which in short, is a set amount of income (pegged to inflation) which is provided to you if you're a US citizen. This money is given to you with no strings attached. I'm going to use an example and say that every American is given $10,000 a year regardless of the income that they have their marital status, and so on.

This in and so of itself removes the cliff dive which is apart of the welfare system we have now. As the welfare system, we have now may give a large number of benefits to someone who makes under $35,000 -- but won't give a dime to someone who is married and makes $36,000 a year. This practically means that the current system does not incentivize growth, it incentivizes you to stay under the imposed income (and other barriers) to get your benefits.

This new UBI system would give you money either way and then you'd be allowed to go work as hard as you want or as little as you want. I think (alongside some economists) that this is going to spur growth as it incentivizes people to go ahead and work hard to continue to succeed as they aren't held down by welfare limits.

I also want to say that with this system, some conservatives and libertarians think that the entire welfare system should be removed -- which includes, Medicare, Medicaid, and then the various federal and state programs which go alongside with it. To them (which I agree with), this plan is a substitute for every single other program that is currently present in the US relating to welfare. I'm not going to go into detail about what the left thinks the right thing to do with UBI is, but I do think they want to remove some programs and then add this on to the current welfare system -- but I think some of the liberal-leaning people who post here can chime in with that side of things.

I do want to stress that I don't know if $10,000 per year is the right number, it may be different based on research. I was JUST using an example.

I do think that UBI can work as a way to remove the hundreds of state and federal programs which aren't necessary when the benefits can come from one central source -- which only has to vet if you're a US citizen or not -- This is a way to remove the massive bureaucracy, and then introduce a program which will have the same effect to the people who need welfare.

i doubt ubi will survive for long, capitalists are very greedy people they will sooner or later try to create a slavish form of capitalism, enslaving as many as possible as money earning cattle to feed their greed for power.