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Of course, the inverse of Universal Basic Income is Universal Basic Labor (UBL).
Instead of money, people pledge to work x number of hours and use that as a medium of exchange in trade. As long as one discharges his pledges, he can keep emitting more 'promissory notes.'
UBL rewards laborers who can produce more and more instead of consumers who spend more and more - taken from others.
Because it isn't an answer (and it has been discussed).
But it resolves the moral objection that most on here have stated against UBI - that people will get paid for doing nothing. With a works program, people would get paid for working.
It’s hated because every country that tries to level the wealth has struggled and the people suffer. Welfare is a support system for people to become successful on their own and that is very different from a universal basic income.
Human nature doesn’t take well to the idea of sharing what you have worked hard to earn. Let’s apply UBI to the school system: you have to pretend grades are a finite resource like money.
You have 10 students. Two work really hard and earn A’s, 2 B’s, 4 C’s and 2 fail. One fails because they are sick and missed class. One refused to even do the work. The professor takes a few points from everyone to help bring up the grade of the sick kid and then they can do extra credit. Everyone’s grade remains almost the same. No one wants to support the person who did nothing and refuses to even do extra credit. Otherwise no one will do the work.
But it resolves the moral objection that most on here have stated against UBI - that people will get paid for doing nothing. With a works program, people would get paid for working.
What jobs?
We are talking about a tipping point where there won't be enough jobs.
Everyone gets the UBI so it isn't rewarding certain people for not working. The UBI alone won't be enough to provide a decent living, and for those who do have jobs it is something extra to fall back on. Many of the people who don't want to work already are not working and still get some kind of government benefits. There are "guides" you can find online instructing how to go about it and it's mostly young people doing it.
A few years ago I was talking to a group of young men, without steady jobs who were bragging about NOT getting benefits because they knew they could.
Forced work programs don't work, we are well beyond that failure. We are not going back.
You want more homeless, more crime and unrest, do nothing.
With deceit? I think not.
The problem is that the ratio between the whole and the UBI needing group is unsustainable.
If there is meaningful work to be done and/or personal reliability is demonstrated PAY for it.
Pay this ever declining cohort well and considerably more than most have been forced to accept.
Pay them enough that they might be able to pay the costs needed to support the others.
As to the others, the MILLIONS of excess population, if they require welfare then so be it but lets not pretend it's income.
The more critical concern for me is about what measures can be taken to not continually repeat
the pattern with successive generations.
Well, fwiw after 2008 household credit card debt did decline, and mortgages started doing a lot more due diligence. When I bought my houses, the banks wanted to see 3 different forms of proof of my income and made me prove my job was not temporary. Families are better off today in terms of their credit card debt, and the ones that have mortgages are more stable than before because the home ownership rate went down and stayed down.
Overall debt is up over 2008, but not by that much. Notice that mortgage debt is still below 2008 levels. It's mainly a culprit of student loans and auto loans. By inflation adjusted measures, we're better off than 2008 in terms of overall household debt.
The student debt is what's exploded - from $611B in 2008 to 1.5T in 2019. I think the student debt issue will come to a head in the next 2-3 years. It's not like we don't need colleges. We need them more than ever now with the work from home revolution.
We will have to write a lot of of the debt, and then impose restrictions on colleges like what Dodd-Frank did to banks.
I get what you are saying but what triggered the 2008 downturn was the real estate market as well as issues with the credit market. What triggered the 2020 downturn was shutting down the economy. On top of it we have issues that at least rival 2008 as far as debt goes. Add to it low interest rates and a huge federal deficit even before the pandemic. Whether you look at one number or another and say 2008 or 2020 had worse fundamentals is not important. I think it is worse today. I believe we were headed to a recession within a year or two without the virus. Its part of the business cycle and although the fed tried to put it off as long as possible they were running out of bullets even before the pandemic.
The problem today is this lingering malaise will be out there at least until the virus is totally under control. That could be a year or two just until the virus is no longer a factor. How much after that until things return to somewhat normal, who knows. Even the great depression did not have the added layer of people being afraid to go about their normal lives. And like you said its hit every part of this country and most of the world very hard. Most recessions and depressions happen differently in different regions and countries at different points.
And if there is a 2nd and or 3rd wave. Do we keep spending trillions to try to salvage the economy and pay everyone to sit at home? Can we?
UBI is not popular because NOBODY likes it when people get something for nothing.
But here's an idea that may make it more palatable while helping reduce the population pressures on our environment:
Why not reduce the $$$ an individual gets with each child above the first so that there is a negative consequence to larger families? This would not be as difficult as one might think but I like the idea in principle.
Those that work and can afford the additional children will have them if they desire.
Those that don't work will be penalized for adding to the societal burden.
Win-win for everyone, yeah?
We are talking about a tipping point where there won't be enough jobs.
Everyone gets the UBI so it isn't rewarding certain people for not working. The UBI alone won't be enough to provide a decent living, and for those who do have jobs it is something extra to fall back on.
A UBI will just make things more expensive. So quickly whatever extra money people will get from it will go to pay for the higher cost of everything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tamajane
Forced work programs don't work, we are well beyond that failure. We are not going back.
You want more homeless, more crime and unrest, do nothing.
Are not most people forced to work as it is? I say give a jobs credit to employers. For each person they hire they get one person subsidized by the feds for at least a year. Once the virus is on the way out we could easily get most people employed again and not put too much strain on businesses. Let state and local governments also participate in this. To me this is much smarter than a UBI or 99 weeks of unemployment like we did in 2008.
I get what you are saying but what triggered the 2008 downturn was the real estate market as well as issues with the credit market. What triggered the 2020 downturn was shutting down the economy. On top of it we have issues that at least rival 2008 as far as debt goes. Add to it low interest rates and a huge federal deficit even before the pandemic. Whether you look at one number or another and say 2008 or 2020 had worse fundamentals is not important. I think it is worse today. I believe we were headed to a recession within a year or two without the virus. Its part of the business cycle and although the fed tried to put it off as long as possible they were running out of bullets even before the pandemic.
The problem today is this lingering malaise will be out there at least until the virus is totally under control. That could be a year or two just until the virus is no longer a factor. How much after that until things return to somewhat normal, who knows. Even the great depression did not have the added layer of people being afraid to go about their normal lives. And like you said its hit every part of this country and most of the world very hard. Most recessions and depressions happen differently in different regions and countries at different points.
And if there is a 2nd and or 3rd wave. Do we keep spending trillions to try to salvage the economy and pay everyone to sit at home? Can we?
To clarify: The financial crisis of 08 was primarily caused by deregulation in the financial industry. That permitted banks to engage in hedge fund trading with derivatives. AANND... When the values of the derivatives crumbled, banks stopped lending to each other. That created the financial crisis that led to the housing market collapse along with a ton of other economic activity.
This shutdown, tied to a viral threat, has many more people in a hissy fit than we saw in 2008 simply because they figure there may be no threat at all. In 2008 they saw the "system" fail, a system they never really understood, but, the same kind of blaming went on, just as we see in today's heated discussions about who to blame.
The recession of 08 really WAS an orchestrated effort by the financial elite, meant to enrich themselves, and when that failed they robbed us again with the help of (both parties) government. But American citizens are woefully lacking in any type of financial preparedness that could carry them through times such as these. So, the future of the economy, in light of that fact, may be greatly altered--shutdown or not..
I agree with your views of an unstable economy rearing it's head way before the viral threat, but this only demonstrates the fragile nature of our lives, any new virus could well flatten the economy and America in it's wake. But we've been living a lie of national solvency since the recession of 08, we wanted to believe in a future, and we wanted the pain to stop, more building, more loans, new schools, new businesses-- all equals more debt, and that's what we've been celebrating these last few years.
Regarding the question of the future of such viral threats and what we can do--I'm looking at Sweden and seeing that they have their own economic woes, even though they have taken a less stringent approach to shutting down economic activity. People here in the US will be the final determiner of how much viral exposure they will allow, and we will eventually be living in a situation more like Sweden. And, to the surprise of those who see the Swede approach as a kind of economic liberation, they will finally understand what the rest of us are saying about cautionary measures as opposed to the notion of an all out no holds barred return to yesterday..
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