Why are so many people afraid of Universal Income on the basis that people need a job for a meaning in their life ?

spartugas wrote:

Why pay someone anything just because they were birthed...

Because no one chooses to be born, let alone into a particular society that says they can't un-birth themselves through suicide.

I could elaborate, but that's about as elegantly as your rhetorical question can be answered.

TL;DR I know this post is long, but if you're at all interested in UBI, then I think it's worth the read.

student of economics wrote:

RyecorDone wrote:

Inflation.

I assume you believe Universal Income would cause significant inflation due to theoretical increase in national debt.

No, I doubt that's what they meant. I'll explain below, but first let me start by addressing the original question. I am open-minded about UBI but skeptical. First of all I would much rather see it tested and proven out at smaller scales prior to implementing it nationwide. And second I don't think we need it now and won't need it nearly as soon as a lot of people are predicting. The robots aren't taking our jobs as fast as people are saying. Exhibit A: fully autonomous vehicles and the end of truck drivers has been "5 years away" for the last 10 years, and I would bet every penny I have that it's still more than more than 10 years away even now.

Funny enough, implementing UBI could drive job automation more than it is a result of job automation. Think about it. If we implemented UBI right now at a level that people could live off of it without a job, who would work as a janitor? The cost of janitorial work would go through the roof, and the incentive to find a way to automate that janitorial work would also go through the roof. So if we implement UBI before all the unpleasant jobs are automated, then UBI itself will become the biggest driver of job automation--assuming that the UBI is at a level that people can live without working.

The concern about people not finding meaning in their lives without a job is a very valid concern, but I'm not sure if it's the biggest concern that I have with UBI. It is worth looking into and trying to understand better before we jump in headfirst though. One the one hand, when you think about things like deaths of despair and depression that we might blame on a lack of meaning in one's life, how many of those people are in a bad financial position versus rich enough to live comfortably without working? I could be wrong and would be interested in the data, but my sense is that filthy rich people who have enough live comfortably the rest of their lives without working generally don't seem to struggle with meaninglessness as much as you might expect if you theorize that anyone who doesn't work struggles to find meaning in their life. On the other hand, old people who retire do often seem to go downhill and lack meaning in their life after they retire. So my limited understanding is that on the surface the evidence is mixed and warrants further investigation before claiming we know the answer.

As I said, I don't think the meaning question is even the biggest problem that UBI needs to overcome. Market interventions tend to have unintended negative consequences on the other side. If you give poor people money to help them pay their rent, then the rents go up because people are able and willing to pay more. If you implement rent control to keep the rent from going up, then no one is willing to invest any money in improving their rental properties because they can't raise the rent to recoup their investment... and on and on. Almost every well-intentioned market intervention like this has very negative consequences on the other side. This is the type of "inflation" I believe the poster quoted above was referencing. If you give everyone more money, then the cost of living is likely to go up because people will be able and willing to pay more for things. And in the end people may be no better off than before.

I don't know what the right answer is, but I think we need to be very, very careful about unintended consequences. If we give everyone enough UBI right now to quit their jobs, then as Elon Musk says, "If no one makes any stuff, there's no stuff (to buy)!" (Btw, Elon also said after trying and failing to automate absolutely every part of the Tesla production, "Humans are underrated." So as I mentioned before, the speed of job automation is greatly overstated.) If the idea is that UBI is just going to be supplementary so that people will be able to work whatever job they want without worrying about whether it pays enough....well then there will likely be all kinds of knock-on effects from that. The wages for desirable jobs will likely race to the bottom, cost of living may go up enough to offset the UBI, undesirable jobs may see high wages initially followed by massive investment into automating them after which they disappear entirely. UBI could potentially be very disruptive in some very ugly ways. We need to think through all these possibilities very, very carefully and ideally test UBI at smaller scales before taking a large-scale plunge.

James Madison wrote:

high school xc coach wrote:

i would 100% quit my job if we had a universal income that was enough to live off of. I would keep coaching if I could, but schools do not always like to hire coaches who are not teachers.

But if I could get the basic income + another 10-15k to coach 3 seasons, my life would be complete.

You're going to coach at a school that doesn't exist because all the teachers quit for the same reason you did. Also the school never would have been built because the construction workers quit for the same reason. Nobody works because everyone has free money.

A universal basic income would be a very BASIC income, i.e, one that would bring a low standard of living but presumably a bit higher than you'd get from welfare and food stamps. It's more a supplement or form of insurance that would free people from drastic consequences of losing or not being able to find a job. People would still work because people would want to own a house, maybe even a second one at a lake or on the beach, maybe to drive a pricey car, send a kid to college, etc. But yes, it might encourage someone with a job he truly hates to chuck it without figuring out what to do next, which could be a good thing.

It also is something that would not be as hard to finance as many people think. Most likely a UBI would eliminate most of the costs of things like welfare, food stamps, and the bureaucracies that come with them. There would be tons of money saved that would be used to provide the incomes.

Not sure where you got the 87% from, but according to actual data, it is 59.9% of jobs are white collar and that includes teachers, sales, ceo's, admin and many jobs that are not just simply data entry. Many people are self-employed and fall into the category of White collar. Research has shown that when you are working for the "Man" you have little drive to do better, you just settle in and do what you have to. When it is your own business and your income is directly connected to your production, you work harder. When it is your land you work harder to make it worth something. Just look at the Indian Nation Tribes, living in poverty, they don't own the land to resale it, why work harder for it, it wont make you anything.

Yes, many people are only living for the routine of living and not really living but at the end of the day that is their choice, Once we take that choice away and you give one person/group the ability to dictate what we do with our time/body/life they will choose what is best for them not for us.

This is ignorant. UBI does not promote laziness, it provides opportunities. If someone doesn't have to work their minimum day job 80 hours a week, they can then put their time and effort into getting a better education or taking care of their family. In turn, they can be a more active citizen and a positive contribution to society. There's also a less chance they turn to drugs or illegal activity to make extra money. And indigenous people? Our government has exploited and stripped away their land and culture. Their way of life might seem "lazy" to your euro-centric standards, but it is not for you to judge a completely different culture not rooted in capitalism. After the horrors we've put indigenous people through, we owe them so much more than the limited reservations and housing we force them to live in.

I agree with the meat of your post. It gets dicey for me around here

Just look at the Indian Nation Tribes, living in poverty, they don't own the land to resale it, why work harder for it, it wont make you anything.

Indigenous people of North America had a completely different way of relating to the land. Only a few in the west relied on farming. Many were accustomed to traveling the great plains and desert, spanning hundreds and hundreds of miles between seasonal sites where there was natural abundance. Then they were sent to settle permanently in oklahoma and the arid 4 corners region (AZ/NM/UT/CO). The dominant culture told them - look, work here, farm and exploit this arid land. Many have tried to make ends meet, but their entire way of life has been destroyed. That they are a struggling ethnic group is not simply due to their lack of land ownership. Visit the 4 corners region, and marvel at the variety of ways these somewhat sovereign people are managing to scrape together enough money to get by. Some of them have resorted to exploiting their own sacred sites because the tourist dollars are more relevant. It's not that they aren't selling their land right, it's that the land has a different meaning to them. They are industrious AF, but there isn't much to live for or live with.

EXCELshEET wrote:

Most people today have office jobs where basically their main work is putting numbers on an excel sheet all day long, to then go to useless meetings where the decision has already been made before they even stepped in the room.

Is that what people long for to do in their life ?

I know people have interesting jobs, but let's be honest, it's far from being the majority.

People are afraid of universal income because it has been shown repeatedly that making people wards of the state leads to decreased productivity and corrupt social programs that corrupt individuals profit off of.

The notion that there are not enough jobs is also a myth. There US has repeatedly priced people out of the job market with minimum wage laws that incentivize moving to automation. Minimum wage has also created a socialist wage structure for lower earners where even those who excel and deserve more may only get a $1 above minimum wage despite be 50% more productive than there peers.

There is lots of evidence for the improved emotional state in people who work hard for their living. Automation will not destroy our jobs, people have been saying this since the start of the industrial revolution, it will just allow us to make workers more efficient or reassign labor to other more productive areas.

Kind of a strawman argument. I do not think that there are any UBI proponents who think that it will enable people to go through life without ever having to work. The Andrew Yang wing of UBI sees it as a recognition of the impending role automation and AI will play in the availability of work. The hope is that people can combine UBI with reduced hours of work and have a decent standard of living.

There is also the UBI as replacement for the welfare state wing. The theory is that the welfare state is inefficient and encourages dependency. UBI would replace all social benefits (social security, welfare, WIC, etc.). The problem with this theory is that it could end up as a net loss for some people and could also be captured in part by inflation.

Don't we already have that? Unemployment insurance? "Send a kid to college" - isn't that scholarships, work/study programs, student loans? BTW - what did making student loans 'easy' for everyone to obtain actually do? Colleges and Unis just increased tuition to soak up all that money. I believe the same will happen across the board with UBI.

A UBI would just turn politics into even more of a bidding war than it already is. A ubi of $1k/month, vote for me and I'll make it $2k! Idiots will vote them in so they get more free money. As the number gets higher people will become increasingly parasitic. Vote for me and I'll make $3k! Etc... until societal collapse.

i agree. this was kind of the point of my post.

I already own my house, which is part of the reason I would so easily just quit working. People who are poor already, they don't own houses. So now they would poor, but they would no longer be working and providing a service.

The automation that came out of the Industrial Revolution allowed so not everyone had to toil in the fields all day. Freeing up some creative and aspiring minds to explore further invention. If done right could create a virtuous cycle. If done right.

appleswan wrote:

James Madison wrote:

You're going to coach at a school that doesn't exist because all the teachers quit for the same reason you did. Also the school never would have been built because the construction workers quit for the same reason. Nobody works because everyone has free money.

Or you offer higher salaries - the poster literally said he would want to still work as a coach.

You really want teachers who are just going to work for a paycheck?

You offer higher salaries... School needs to charge more to cover those salaries... students and their parents cannot afford that with only the universal income an have to work more... inflation

Easy to understand for most people...

What does white collar even mean now?

Also, anyone have any data on the amount time spent simply plugging numbers into an excel spreadsheet?

The UBI was given a short test in Manitoba. Some interesting results.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment

One issue of concern is the high admin costs. As the article above notes, this comes on top of the social net already provided.

One proposal for UBI is that all other forms of aid are eliminated. So no more food stamps since you are getting $X. So ending a lot of those programs would eliminate a lot of admin costs. It seems to me sending the checks would be pretty easy (the federal government is pretty good at that really). We pay a lot of folks to make sure food stamps, etc. are compliant; sending out $1000/month (or whatever the amount) would have no strings attached to it. Likely we still need some programs for those in greater need such as the severely disabled.

A concern is that people would not work, but no realistic proposal would be enough for people to live off of solely. As found short-term in Manitoba unemployment did not go up. One anecdote is a guy opening a record store (kids ask your parents).

Some problems I see would be that every politician running for office would keep promising a higher and higher UBI. They did it with income tax cuts to the point that almost 50% of wage earners pay no federal income tax. Essentially vote buying. A way around that is to put in the law that for 25 years the UBI can only match COLA (although that can be manipulated as well) and that any increases beyond that need a supermajority (2/3) vote.

Another issue is that whatever the UBI is that in high cost places (NY, San Fran, etc.) it would be less buying power than in Des Moines. So do you adjust it? If so that gets tricky.

As for the larger question of work giving meaning, I think there is something to that for a lot of folks. Some people really like putting numbers into excel all day. Thankfully! That way I do not have to! But the finance people I know (those who do accounting for businesses) take pride in their work and keeping the books is critical to the operation of a business. Just because you would not like doing some job does not mean that others have to agree with you. Besides as noted, a person would still need a job. Maybe it allows for a person to pursue some lower paying position with that safety net.

Javman wrote:

If that is your understanding of the range of jobs in life, you are either 5 years old or are a complete loser living in your parents basement.

10s of millions of people have OUTDOOR, blue collar jobs besides those indoor jobs that don't involve sitting behind a computer.

With regard to universal income, no one is "afraid". The question becomes the source of that income. Businesses cannot guarantee certain levels of income as there's no such thing as guaranteed sales from which to salaries, and governments cannot do the same as to do so would involve creating public debts through financial instruments issued to the public...and there is no promuse that anyone would buy thise insruments.

Universal income is a fantasy of liberals that only ends in financial ruin over the long term.

Libertarians such as Milton Friedman have championed the idea.

The federal gov already is creating public debt through all the social services it offers (Social Security, medicare/medicaid, food stamps, etc.). A UBI (in some forms) replaces all those.

Meant to add

I don't think I have seen a realistic UBI proposal that would provide enough income so that a person would not have to work.

UBI was given a short test in Manitoba in the 70s. Some of the problems were that it was tacked onto an already expensive social services system. The proposals I have seen eliminate a huge chunk of welfare programs. It might well be cheaper to send out checks with no strings that the current byzantine system.