If someone wants money to engage with society in a more meaningful way, there are always jobs to allow them to do so- even if they're dirty.
You can participate by spending money you were gifted, but you're not contributing. If it was just about participation, let's remove all the clutter, just give everyone a million bucks a month - we can all participate in the economy by spending roughly $30k a day and it'll be an economic wonder. The question is: who will be there to sell us things, to cook food at the fancy restaurant etc, if they also get $30k a day? You'll have to pay them a lot more than today. And that'll just mean that your $30k are worth proportionally less.
Money is just a placeholder for value. You need the value being produced to make the money meaningful.
Even without tangling with that question, there's the argument that moving money around is itself a contribution. It's a marginal one, and if that's all you're doing, that means your total contribution is marginal. But that's fine, there's always going to be a spectrum of contributions between those that are paper-thin and the earth-shattering works of great import. Some jobs that look like hard work are a net negative on society. If you get into the game of saying "contributions below this specific level don't count", you end up splitting hairs and, because everyone's values work differently, you can't avoid bringing moral arguments into the frame.
Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. That's qualitatively different, not least because it's so far from the basic cost of living that it just doesn't make sense as a comparison. It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it.
The more important question is: if so, do all human lives have that worth? That is: to satisfy A's personal hobbies, are we allowed to make B work more than B would personally like?
If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it. We have computers, we can do it at a very high frequency. Even if it's a marginal contribution, we can do it many times per second. If it's indeed a contribution, that should help, shouldn't it? If we need more contribution, we'll just add another node or increase bandwidth, and voila, we'll have even more, which we can use to add even more. Magic!
> Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day.
Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages.
> It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it.
That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society.
That's precisely the question, yes. Although there is the question of whether B would actually be affected. There's an underlying assumption to this statement that UBI would be an appreciable net cost, rather than being offset by savings in other parts of the economy. Bear in mind that there is already a rather dramatic range of income tax levels across the developed world; there's nothing inevitable about the current level of "paying for other people's hobbies" that we currently engage in.
> If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it.
I'd hope it was transparent that the moving around of money that an individual engages in by buying food and services in their local economy (or online, it doesn't really matter) has qualities that aren't preserved by this system.
> Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages.
So jobs that fall below a very basic income level cease to be relevant. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But also, the difference between your $30k example and the sorts of realistic proposals you see is proportion, and that matters. If I was being paid ${UBI} by my employer yesterday, and today I'm being paid ${UBI} by the state, my employer now has to add to that, not replace it. It might take another $30k a day for me to appreciate the difference from an employer if that's my current rate, but at the other end of the scale people are actually considering, if I can get an extra $10 a day on top of UBI, that might be enough.
Think of it from the other side, too: today, I've got a salary cost of $X for my employee. Tomorrow, the state pays them $X. I can add $10 to that and their take-home goes up, while my costs drop by $X-$10.
> That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society.
Only for an arbitrarily narrow definition of "contribute". There is nothing magical about removing the economy-level costs of individual poverty, and work would only be "optional" if you were content with a very basic level of existence.
I do believe we all agree that it will be, yes. There are claims that you can "reduce administrative overhead" to pay for it, but they are many orders of magnitudes off. So for all proposals that don't include magic or just hand-wave away all objections, yes, B will be affected. If we only have A and B, and B would like to work no more than required to live comfortably, B would have to work twice as hard to also pay for A. If you have A, B and C, it's 150% for both B and C and so on.
I'm sure that most people will agree to do it if A is incapable of contributing, but not if A just is unwilling to contribute. You could argue that the unwillingness should be considered a symptom, but that's pretty close to saying the unemployed are mentally ill. And if they were, shouldn't we help them get healthy instead?
> I'd hope it was transparent that the moving around of money that an individual engages in by buying food and services in their local economy (or online, it doesn't really matter) has qualities that aren't preserved by this system.
The issue with "just moving money around" is that it's really no different than doing it virtually. The point of "moving money around" in the economy is exchanging goods. Just making money change hands doesn't produce anything, so to contribute you have to produce something (or help produce it as an employee etc), you'll get money for it and you then exchange that money for things other people have produced. As long as the money is backed by value, everything is fine, and moving it around a lot is great for efficient markets. But you're not suggesting money backed by value, you're suggesting increasing money by itself, without adding value (contributing) to the economy. We don't need an extra person to buy bread from the bakery for the person who makes the bread to then go and buy something from the fruit stand etc, we can just cut out the initial person you want to gift money to, they serve no purpose, they don't add value, even marginal value, just by existing.
> So jobs that fall below a very basic income level cease to be relevant.
No more garbage collection, no more grocery store clerks, no more sewer inspections, no more farming! That's not necessarily a bad thing ;)
> Tomorrow, the state pays them $X. I can add $10 to that and their take-home goes up, while my costs drop by $X-$10.
Their motivation to do $whatever drops by $X, so you don't have to add $10, you'd have to add $X.
> There is nothing magical about removing the economy-level costs of individual poverty, and work would only be "optional" if you were content with a very basic level of existence.
Please define that very basic level of existence. I have a feeling that it's not "a bed, 3000 calories, a chair and a change of cloths", but rather "an average sized apartment, a tv, diverse food choices, a computer, internet, an allowance to spend on fun things etc", as it's widely considered today in Europe as the existential minimum.
I'm not talking about "administrative overhead", although that's certainly part of it. I'm talking about things like reducing the costs to society of having significant parts suffering malnutrition. Reducing policing costs because people aren't forced into crime simply to survive. Those sorts of costs.
> I'm sure that most people will agree to do it if A is incapable of contributing, but not if A just is unwilling to contribute.
Who gets to define what "contributing" means? Or what "unwilling" means? Why are you sure about what "most people" think? "Most people" - 51% in a recent survey - are in favour of UBI, outnumbering those opposed 2:1. In my experience, once you strip away propaganda, most people aren't that paternalistic, moralistic, and judgemental, especially when it comes to a benefit they themselves would also get.
> The issue with "just moving money around" is that it's really no different than doing it virtually...
When already-rich people automate moving money around, it's called "providing liquidity" and "price discovery". The same ideas apply on the individual level, plus the baker gets to participate and build value in a long-term relationship with an individual. There's clearly economic value here over and above the base exchange of money.
> No more garbage collection, no more grocery store clerks, no more sewer inspections, no more farming!
No more exploitation of poverty to get these things to happen, possibly. Yes, there will be economic effects: the wages for some jobs will need to go up, the wages for other jobs can go down. The point is that the directions of these things will be in a favourable direction.
> Their motivation to do $whatever drops by $X, so you don't have to add $10, you'd have to add $X.
Motivation is not linear.
> Please define that very basic level of existence.
Ok, here's a concrete proposal: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/aug/12/andrew-yangs-... $1000 a month. $250 a week. Here's another: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/19/hull-univers... £50-£100 a week.
> I have a feeling that it's not "a bed, 3000 calories, a chair and a change of cloths", but rather "an average sized apartment..."
Where does that feeling come from?