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Comment by DubiousPusher | Hacker News Reader

I agree. Letting workers leave abusive employment situations is a benefit of UBI. UBI might even totally reorient the idea of work in that now an employer has the incentive to keep workers happy that must be balanced with the profit incentive.

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Yea, I think many in the tech circles forget how predatory a lot of industries are. My first "real" job was a state job (good benefits, good hours, etc), and eventually I migrated to tech. After years of that I met my wife, who worked retail.

At basically every aspect of her job it felt like her employer did not respect her as a person. Her work hours weren't steady, her pay wasn't good, she was constantly at risk of losing her "full time" status and if she did lose that she could drop down to random ~5h/week slots. Her employer wouldn't even fire you, they would just drop you down to basically no hours until you had to quit and miss out on unemployment.

Most of the staff she worked with in fact, most of which I'd argue were full time employees were withheld hours just so they wouldn't get full time benefits. Looking around for jobs was also difficult as most other employers did not want full time employees either.

Employers in lesser skilled fields get away with murder because employees have very little ground to stand on. They don't have the income to build financial independence, nor does the government help them out in many cases. Even unemployment is gamed and withheld.

I don't know if UBI is the answer, but something needs to be done.

UBI would reorient the idea of work in the sense that new generations won't think about work the way we do, for them it will be something that you can do, not something you have to do. Similarly how sport is today, you can do sports but you don't have to.

Also with UBI you are guaranteed a certain amount of income for the duration of your life. You can go to a bank and take a loan against your UBI. A big portion of the UBI will end up at the banks because basically the loans are guaranteed by the government.

I think they would have to make it illegal to borrow against your UBI to create a true safety net.

Hmm, like dual of bank minimum reserve.

Wouldn't it just work to make it illegal to attach UBI for non-payment of loans. Then UBI would cease to work as collateral.

That's not necessarily true. Work ethic is not derived only from the notion that people need to work. It is derived from an ethical imperative and from a sense of achievement people get from work. Also, any UBI would likely be well under the amount of money necessary to live a middle class life. I myself was on SSI and could have found a way to subsist on it but really did not want to live that way. I got to know a lot of other people on SSI as well and they mostly felt the same. Most were looking for a way to make enough money to get off government assistance. This was substantially affected by the fact that the government takes 50 cents for every dollar you make. For me, living in Montana, this meant I could go to work for $5.15/hour minimum wage. I could earn $40 a day and lose $20 from my benefit. If you want to talk about a benefit system designed to disincentive work you'd have a hard time inventimg a better one than we have now.

The proposed monthly amount was €2,300 in Switzerland when they had a referendum on the issue in 2016. That is enough to have a more than decent living.

Work ethic might be engrained into our culture, but someone who is brought up in a society where UBI is normal and they are just a few years away from becoming "rich", I think not-working-ever is a very enticing idea and many teens will fall into that trap.

#1 You're citing the highest possible individual example I know of. Most tests I've seen range from $300-$1,200 per month in wealthy countries.

#2 Switzerland has a very high cost of living so I'm not sure 2,300 Swiss Francs is that high.

#3 Your second paragraph is 100% begging the question. I'm open to the idea that UBI might be good or bad for work ethic but there simply is not enough data for you to have the confidence you do in your conclusion.

> You can go to a bank and take a loan against your UBI. Basically a government subsidy for loans.

Trying to figure out how this would work. Presumably a bank would only lend a portion of the UBI to you

Quite simple, you'd borrow a lump sum and the bank would accept on the basis you have a guaranteed income and therefore able to make the repayments.

If you default on the payments after spending the loan, how will they collect? There's no collateral to sell to recoup the principal, and the government isn't obligated to back up the loan you took, only to keep paying you UBI going forward.

Therefore, the loan would have to be dismissable in bankruptcy. So a UBI loan basically reduces down to nothing more than an unsecured "personal loan", which is something you can get today, albeit at very high interest rates:

https://www.nerdwallet.com/personal-loans?annualIncomeFilter...

The average life expectancy of the population would determine together with inflation and interest the maximum amount you'd be able to borrow. A rough calculation at $1,000 UBI a month would give you around $500K available to borrow at 18 and you'd pay back around 750k till you die at 82.

> UBI might even totally reorient the idea of work...

Which is exactly why Employees like the idea and employers hate it.

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