‘Time has come’ for universal basic income, says Scotland’s first minister | Hacker News Reader

‘Time has come’ for universal basic income, says Scotland’s first minister

independent.co.uk

53 pointsingve16 comments

I like the idea, but typically at home when I start giving out weekly allowance "for free" (to our teenager), the quality of mandatory house chores diminishes very quickly! :D

Maybe as a society we think you ask for too much but he depends on your money so he has no choice but to oblige

This is somewhere between a genius and terrible analogy and I'm not sure where.

The genius part is the analogy; the terrible part is the reality.

UBI for the USA too.

When you take ownership of all the land and leave many landless, you owe them compensation. When you reserve the right to conscript people against their will to go to war, you commit yourself to their welfare.

It's a great idea, and should not go to billionaires and other affluent-alreadys whose receipt of the fund will devalue the Scottish dollar.

UBI is only sustainable if those who elect to receive it cannot vote or have children. Otherwise they will continually vote for greater payments, and have an excess of children, and the UBI population will eventually subsume the productive population.

Instead of UBI we should guarantee housing (ie. by building it) and also targeting a fixed population maximum, by restricting immigration, which will also reduce housing prices and increase wages.

This comment is peak HN. I am not sure if some of the assumptions are correct.

Is it true that there are two populations - productive people and welfare dependents - and that people live their lives in one or the other bucket?

Is it true that the population that one belongs to is hereditary?

Is it true that people dependent on UBI would vote to increase it? Do people dependent on welfare vote to increase welfare in general?

"Fixed population" We gonna kill a grandparent everytime someone has a kid?

invest in fully automated manufacturing. tax robots per hour of work and output value. implement ubi. stop herding humans for labour in exchange of meaningless pay.

See: Ian Banks, the Culture series.

What is there to see in a post scarcity interstellar civilization of powerful, interventionist AIs and their pet drugged, mostly apolitical humans?

Ah, I see it now.

Just that easy

I noticed the caveat of scrapping other benefits.

Thus is the point. Proponents of UBI say that cutting administrative costs will free up a lot of funds.

This is to be expected. Existing need-based programs are disassembled and funds are redirected to the new blanket ones.

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