Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I agree some employers do not pay enough. How would UBI change that? If I can pay my lame $10/hour and with UBI it effectively becomes like $15/hour, why would I pay more?
Did you pay more without UBI? We've been waiting. And it hasn't happened. That's why we have calls for UBI to be implemented. Plus we KNOW that as soon as you can get that fully automated factory built its syonara to just about the entire workforce at your jobsite. Illegal dumping, but there is no law against it.
UBI is mainly looking ahead to a future without much work for anyone really. Doesn't matter if you are white collar, blue collar or no collar; advances in robotics and cybernetics are going to make most labor redundant. What work one may be able to scrounge up won't pay much. Why would it? UBI might keep folks at the end of their rope from winding up in a reservoir. Literally. I'm serious they are really worried about this. Some are arguing for putting things like lithium in municipal water supplies to lower the anxiety of the population without it's cooperation. America. Land of the Free is contemplating chemical population control. UBI is a much less nasty way of achieving the same outcome.
Did you pay more without UBI? We've been waiting. And it hasn't happened. That's why we have calls for UBI to be implemented.
No reason for an employer to offer wages (at the lowest levels) higher than what he needs to keep a staff going. I agree that overall they're too low at the lower ends of the spectrum. Employee retention and re-training problems help prove that. Wages HAVE gone up but by a somewhat laughable amount. Sure, $12/hour is 20% higher than $10/hour (and I would LOVVVVVE a 20% raise myself) but $12/hour is not really a livable wage.
But if I can keep that wage low knowing that the employees are getting magic money to make their effective wages higher, why would **I** also raise my wages offered? Take my crappy $10/hr because magic mike will basically throw in another $5/hour.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisesturm
UBI is mainly looking ahead to a future without much work for anyone really. Doesn't matter if you are white collar, blue collar or no collar.
But if I can keep that wage low knowing that the employees are getting magic money to make their effective wages higher, why would **I** also raise my wages offered? Take my crappy $10/hr because magic mike will basically throw in another $5/hour.
You aren't going to raise that crappy wage for any reason. That was my point. You haven't raised it in 20 years. At least 20 years ago the $10/hr. was just kinda crappy. Now it's downright unliveable. Why do you care that Magic Mike is helping out your workers? Because it makes you look bad?
Walmart ... no shame in their game. Walmart coaches new hires on how to get various forms of Social Assistance because they KNOW that their workers cannot continue being reliable (or healthy) on what they pay. We subsidize Walmart's low wages. Magic Mike is already on the job keeping Walmart workers from starving while they struggle in high cost of living states to make it in to work every day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KemBro71
So what generates the revenue to fund the UBI?
That's above my pay grade, and yours too probably. But obviously the money is there. Don't worry about it. There are double digit Trillions lying around in Tax Havens all over the world. Time to put some of that slush to work! Just the first round of cash incentives $1200 for every tax payer. That cost less than $280B of a 3T(!) stimulus package. All the rest went to rich people. And they want to do it again! That UBI can't come soon enough. The money would be spent almost immediately. It would be taxed, it would generate revenue, it would be like ... like perpetual motion. LOL. No it wouldn't, but it would be a better use of money than wars. Or bailouts for RICH corporations.
Whole idea was by now robots would be making all the mula and we'd be living off much of it with much reduced work hours.
Trouble is people are very greedy and always want more and more. More desire/greed = more demand for material rubbish = more work that has to be done, with lower pay rates, and so on.
Deflection. You are failing to identify the “compassion“ in a system where the wealth of productive people is systematically raided and stolen for the unearned and undeserved benefit of other people.
Your friend and wife could have provided their own social safety net by having had a savings plan in place where 20% of income was put away and invested to handle emergencies. He could’ve easily had one to two years of income saved. And for longer interruptions in income he could buy income interruption insurance in the private market. There is no need for a system of socially sanctioned theft where people forcibly take money from others because they need it or want it a lot. We just don’t need that type of system.
We should have a private market economy where insurance can be purchased for any and all catastrophes. And we should have an education system that teaches people how to think so that they can come to the correct conclusion to buy these insurance products when they are healthy.
And not in the middle of a sob story constructed to advance an agenda of redistribution and theft. No matter what your little catastrophic anecdote is, a system can easily be devised where citizens take care of the problem individually, for their own benefit, using voluntary and free private market products. Then they do not need to lean on others using the police power of the state to confiscate what is not theirs.
Private insurance, not public welfare. Capitalism, not collectivism. Freedom, not tyranny.
My friends had about 18 months of savings. That ran out after 4 years of him not being able to work. His employer provided long term disability, but denied coverage, then cancelled the plan, then filed bankruptcy, so there was no long term insurance. He went back to school, which I helped with - it was not that expensive then, and I had extra cash, and he finally earned a degree. However, lots of companies aren't interested in hiring someone who is 50 and been out of work for 12 years, so he never got a great job, and was working at Costco when he died at age 63 from a heart attack brought on by the long term stress of his injuries. I tell this story because you seem to think that people receiving a public benefit are all lazy and shiftless.
I don't really give a crap what you think, and don't know why I am even arguing with you. All I can do is hope that some day you realize that you belong to a society, and that a decent society provides ways to support the less fortunate in times of need. I'm not a fan of UBI, as I don't think it will work. I am in favor of providing a safety net, though, because there are a lot of people who need some help from time to time, and I don't want their kids begging on the street like I've seen in third world countries.
You aren't going to raise that crappy wage for any reason. That was my point. You haven't raised it in 20 years. At least 20 years ago the $10/hr. was just kinda crappy. Now it's downright unliveable. Why do you care that Magic Mike is helping out your workers? Because it makes you look bad?
Walmart ... no shame in their game. Walmart coaches new hires on how to get various forms of Social Assistance because they KNOW that their workers cannot continue being reliable (or healthy) on what they pay. We subsidize Walmart's low wages. Magic Mike is already on the job keeping Walmart workers from starving while they struggle in high cost of living states to make it in to work every day.
That's above my pay grade, and yours too probably. But obviously the money is there. Don't worry about it. There are double digit Trillions lying around in Tax Havens all over the world. Time to put some of that slush to work! Just the first round of cash incentives $1200 for every tax payer. That cost less than $280B of a 3T(!) stimulus package. All the rest went to rich people. And they want to do it again! That UBI can't come soon enough. The money would be spent almost immediately. It would be taxed, it would generate revenue, it would be like ... like perpetual motion. LOL. No it wouldn't, but it would be a better use of money than wars. Or bailouts for RICH corporations.
If you are working now for $10 an hour which is what you were working for 10 years ago....you may want to take a second look at what's crappy.
If you take off your blinders and actually speak with people that have made it, you will notice something. Most started with these same crappy jobs. They learned something from these crappy jobs which is why they still value them being there. Even if they only learned that they want better than this crappy job.
It's up to the individual to work THROUGH that crappy job, not to require people make these crappy jobs places for permanent livelihoods. At the end of the day, the person with the crappy wage AGREED to work for said crappy wage. Nobody forced them to take the job. The last thing we need is a third party unrelated and uncaring on the situation to step in and start dictating how things "ought" to be.
If you are working now for $10 an hour which is what you were working for 10 years ago....
I am not. Nor are most people. But someone is. Starting out. My first job paid $5.25/hr. Bank Teller. Min wage was $3.25/hr. My apt. in not the best neighborhood was $250/mo. 2BD. Palatial. Paying $150/mo for a one bedroom was not unheard of. But this was a family connection. Some kid starting out like I was, just out of the house at 18y.o. probably can find a job paying double what I was making, maybe even triple, but he won't find an apartment for double what I was paying. He will pay 5x times what I was paying. If he has the stomach for it he might find a single room occupancy in a truly dangerous part of town for double $250/mo ($500/mo), but food will be 8 times what I was paying. No getting around that.
My point wasn't that people plotz in dead end jobs forever, but that jobs that used to allow a kid starting out to live independently no longer exist because unlike salaries, which have maybe doubled in some sectors, and tripled in others, things like rents, food, clothes, ... those things have more than quintupled, some have a more than 10x increase. That's in a roughly 30 year, maybe 40 year span of time.
Truly, if you don't have Middle Class parents that can spend six figures on your higher education and support you till you graduate and either work for your Alma Mater or find a non-profit and start at ~45K you will wind up bouncing from $10/hr dead end job to $12/hr dead end job and selling Plasma when you want to get enough money to take a girl out. The American Dream.
Is a lie. I know from what I am talking about. I am a second generation immigrant. I know about HARD work. I've seen it close up. Striving. Movin' on up. There is a better way. Just because that's how we did it doesn't mean that is the way everyone should do it. This isn't Groundhog Day. Or maybe it is and I am Bill Murray, realizing that we are all stuck in a Capitalist closed time loop and need to break out.
My friends had about 18 months of savings. That ran out after 4 years of him not being able to work. His employer provided long term disability, but denied coverage, then cancelled the plan, then filed bankruptcy, so there was no long term insurance. He went back to school, which I helped with - it was not that expensive then, and I had extra cash, and he finally earned a degree. However, lots of companies aren't interested in hiring someone who is 50 and been out of work for 12 years, so he never got a great job, and was working at Costco when he died at age 63 from a heart attack brought on by the long term stress of his injuries. I tell this story because you seem to think that people receiving a public benefit are all lazy and shiftless.
I don't really give a crap what you think, and don't know why I am even arguing with you. All I can do is hope that some day you realize that you belong to a society, and that a decent society provides ways to support the less fortunate in times of need. I'm not a fan of UBI, as I don't think it will work. I am in favor of providing a safety net, though, because there are a lot of people who need some help from time to time, and I don't want their kids begging on the street like I've seen in third world countries.
Good. You are free to help anyone you want with money you earn and own. But don’t presume to “part of a society” others into helping those you deem deserving at the point of a gun. We are not our brother’s keeper. You ask for help, you don’t demand it.
And you don’t know why your friend died at 63. Asserting it was from stress from societal neglect is unmitigated bs. 63 is a slightly early but normal time to die. You don’t get to claim a reason based on your collectivist political ideals. Working at Costco was honorable and fine. Better than sitting at home. He gets credit for working. You get no credit for demanding that we live in a society based on theft. It doesn’t have to be that way, and it shouldn’t be that way. Compassion be damned when it means people like you deciding on whose stuff to “redistribute” to which people, using the police power of the state to threaten people with death or imprisonment if they don’t “pay up” according to your “standards”. You want to help someone? Good. In a free society you won’t be stopped.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
