This is the only argument I present to people that talk to me about UBI in a positive way, ie they want UBI.
If people are given enough money to live on for free I would wager there is zero incentive for them to be productive within society. Zero.
Change my mind!
And like I said in my other comment, there are a bunch of incentives. People usually want to have more money to save up, buy more stuff, feel more secure, etc. so people would work to have more money than the basic income. Apart from that, people want jobs to have a higher status among their peers and some people genuinely like what they do.
If UBI was introduced, would you personally sit around all day or would you continue working? If you'd continue working, what makes you think you're the only one?
Utopian societies don't exist but giving people free money that is paid for by the middle class (yes, the middle class will fund this, not the billionaires!) is not the answer.
12k is enough money to live but your standard of living is worse enough to be visibly felt.
If you look at https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/, 12k / yr generally the level where most essentials are visible around the world. But you're likely not going to have:
1) A car
2) A house
3) Feed a family
4) Savings
5) An expensive hobby
You'd need about another 5-10k on the UBI check to really make this argument for UBI... which you get through working.
Second, you ignore the basics of economics of demand and supply: if a large enough proportion of the population lies on UBI you will even find cars cheap enough for them, either second hand or purpose built. True story, Renault is a car manufacturer that sells their cars for prices very similar to everyone else, but they built for some years a model that was selling for 5000 Euro (about $6000 at that time) new, with a modern and solid engine and all the safety features mandated by law in Europe. That car was also sold in France for a lot more (8000 euro or more) just because people in France afforded to pay more. Now Renault is still selling 7000 Euro cars (Dacia Sandero) that are really good for the money, while selling Renault branded cars for around 20,000 Euro and more.
Also, no, the basics of supply and demand will not make cheap cars a thing. It's not the cost of a car that you can't afford, it's the cost of maintenance. Fuel, maintenance, and insurance (mandatory in the US btw) are all costs to use the car - the average being around $100/mth.
https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/cost-to-own-a-vehicle/ -> 1.1k
And also no, new cars will not become cheaper over time in the US. There's already 19% of the US families who make under 24k a year (we roughly double UBI to account for 2 adult UBI incomes and one car per household rule). That's 24 million households already out of the 130m households in the US. The market for used cars is actually quite big (17.6 million transactions / yr) which is probably why there isn't an $8200 new US car offering (which, btw, requires savings in order to purchase).
Back to my original point, if you have a budget of 1k/month, you could spend ~$400 on rent, $300 on food, $100 on your car, $100 on personal needs, and $100 on misc / emergencies in a small suburban town (like the outskirts of Pittsburgh) -> I've done this in college before. But realistically you would need an extra ~$600-1000 a month to pay for things like - internet, health insurance, furniture, clothes, laptop, phone, heating / ac bill, eating out every so often, a social life, hobbies, travel, etc. So yes, you'd still want double of your UBI income.
The kind of people that live on UBI (with no other job) are not the kind of people that care about savings.
This is either very poor wording or just plain wrong. UBI is a cash grant policy, nothing more. The intent is to increase overall standard of living of the poorest people in the US more efficiently, not to make everyone have the same high level of standard of living for free.
It's a policy, not an ideology.
In respect to that, I already mentioned that 12k is enough money to live but your standard of living is worse enough to be visibly felt.
yes, people say they don't want to work. but what they really mean is that they don't want to work bad jobs just because they have to.
why do people do volunteer work? again, what incentive to do volunteers work do people have now? lots of work without much reward. yet people still do it. UBI won't change that, but it will give more people the opportunity to do volunteer work, or do more of it.
many jobs today are not actually producutive for society. people do them because they pay. and they will continue doing them because UBI won't enable you to have expensive vacations or other luxuries that you might enjoy.
on the other hand, people stuck in bad jobs may be enabled to quit them, because it won't cost them their home or their insurance. pay will rise because people don't need to accept hard labor for minimum wage anymore.
Take any country with wide social safety nets. You don't really need to work in them to live.
At least in my country most people prefer working. There is a small subculture of some families that seem to pass on unemployment as a way of life to their children but those are really ,really few.
My answer is - I don't know the general answer. In my culture people prefer working to not working, even though they don't have to. But I don't know if this applies universally.
Please give an example of such a country on Earth, it does not exist. Mythical countries don't qualify.
Look at any of the newspapers and there will be plenty of stories of people who learned to game the system and get plenty of welfare money.
Source - I know one of them and I live in the UK.
Work can be fulfilling. If money is not a problem what is to stop you from doing something that interests you?
Being part of a community, learning some cool new skill.
The idea that everyone will become a zombie on UBI sound unfounded.
Yes there are useless destructive people out there, they thrive on misery and pain. Capitalism, UBI, Communism, neither will fix them. But why present them as a example of how system will fail.
What about next great artist that went into ad company and never took a chance to do their art.
Or a next great tinker or inventor stuck in some soul draining 5-9 in a factory buried under medical debt.
What about those who would have a chance to create something tenfold the value they create now?
There is less incentive for people to survive financially by doing unethical work on behalf of powerful and wealthy people, OK, we can agree on that.
But, is (for example) cooking and cleaning and caring for others 'productive'? We don't see that in macroeconomic figures, so it doesn't count - but most people do a huge amount of that without being motivated by pay.
My understanding of the world is that most people are even more motivated to do things for others that don't bring a financial reward.
I'm using it in it's lowest sense: paying back into society to fund all the other stuff that government will want money for.
So, basically, we will have more takers than producers, therefore, it cannot possibly work.
Sure, you'll get poets, artists and the like taking advantage of it and society will be better off in the long run for it... probably. I don't know, never studied that stuff before.
But the immediate problem is that you will have a shit-ton of leeches that will take the money and play video games all day long. It can't possibly be financially viable.
But to pick up a point from your comment:
> Is (for example) cooking and cleaning and caring for others 'productive'?
I'd wager that it can be for two possible reasons:
1. It perhaps allows the person being cared for to help society in some way (either directly through taxes or poetry etc.) 2. The cleaner gets paid and ultimately puts money back into society.
And yes, there are tons of "non-jobs" where nothing is ultimately created, I get it. But that won't go away with UBI: banks will still have too many employees doing nothing all day (source - worked in banks for years!)
On another note: I live in Scotland and I will bet that within 5 years we will have UBI... we're already bankrupt so, hey, what's another £50Bn a year added to the unpayable debt pile :)
Lett's start with the obvious: it doesn't matter that some people will do nothing. It doesn't matter that some people will not be working. Not only are the benefits to society great (the yearly costs for society of homeless people, or similar scenarios are much greaterthan a simple $12k.), you're looking to cut off everyone from UBI because what, 5% would not be working? So, kind of like unemployment today then.
We've come far enough as first world societies that we can ensure that everyone gets a liveable amount of money every month. And don't forget that UBI cuts off every other kind of aid. Go live a life with $1000 a month, and you'll realise that you have to be in a very particular mindset to stay at home and do nothing.
In addition, it's also a great thing for the economy, as money is actually being used to pay things, and circulating taxed away from the cash hoarding dragons that are billionaires. That makes Keynes happy.
I don't believe that it would only be 5% but yes, I am.
Living in the UK means we have a welfare system. It's not fair, hopelessly bureaucratic and probably corrupt as hell but we have one.
There is no way that giving everyone (eligible?) £1000 a month will take a whole bunch of people out of poverty because managing finances is a skill that no one is taught in schools.
People who have good jobs and earn good money can't manage it as is. So by giving free money to millions of people they're likely to fritter it away or piss it away thus wasting billions.
> cash hoarding dragons
Your issue is with them. They won't pay for UBI. I will. You will. Everyone else but them will pay for it.
It will not work.[0]
In half of my country (in Europe) people would be extremely satisfied to live on $1000 per month, it is triple of what they live on today. I know people in Western Europe that would be quite happy to get $1000 and not have to go to work for that (they earn more, but the difference does not make up for their time and effort).
I tend to align with the capitalist worldview. In a democracy where 'majority' rules, politicians can end up in a precarious situation where welfare blocks feeling marginalized can create an insurmountable opportunity cost perpetuating welfare policies. This could certainly destroy an economy if pushed too far. Strangely, either if non-working individuals couldn't vote or if the government system wasn't majority rule perhaps this trend wouldn't hold true.
All of that being said, we can't turn our backs on all safety nets as responsible policy makers. As for where the line should be drawn? Who knows. Just be wary of giving politicians the authority to decrease voter elasticity (the cost an individual incurs when they vote away a political party).
Political welfare decisions are protecting people (or not) more than capitalist incentives are.
The study found that the people on the UBI payments we're more likely to be employed than the reference group - Its clearly wildly incorrect to say that there's zero incentive to find work