The 'B' stands for 'Basic'. Most of us already work to get better things. That won't change.
Its a strawman that won't die - that the Basic Income is going to make people well-off for no work.
>The 'B' stands for 'Basic'. Most of us already work to get better things. That won't change.
To me UBI is like a pension because you're getting a monthly payment for not doing anything. Your point doesn't really refute that.
Might as well call a dividend a pension - you get that 'unearned' as well.
• I can assume they're just wrong, and don't understand the implications of what they're saying, ignoring other people because they're profoundly confused
• or I can assume, instead, that they believe the basic entitlement of all people is less than the staying alive threshold – i.e., that human life doesn't have inherent value.
I hope this is a false dichotomy.
From what moral authority do positive rights originate? (a right that requires someone to provide you with a good or service)
From what moral authority do negative rights originate? (a right that prevents somebody from interfering with you or harming you)
Over the course of hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, negative rights have been developed successfully in legal systems around the world. We've seen demonstrable evidence that enforcing protections of negative rights results in a happier and more productive population.
Different countries have also, generally more recently, brought forth positive rights by various means- welfare programs, socialism, full communism, or otherwise.
People that tend to care more about negative rights than positive rights tend toward right-libertarianism. Positive rights, in a sense, require those who can provide to forfeit some of their freedom, in order to help those who require it. There is a non-zero risk that a well-meaning welfare or socialist policy fails in its mission despite good intentions. Many of the communist states with the most heartfelt populist movements have seen the deepest failures. So in the right-libertarian mindset, there is a risk of a two-fold (or perhaps threefold) failure:
-It promised to provide (positive rights) prosperity to all, and it didn't
-It had to trample on the negative rights of the wealthy to try to redistribute their wealth
-(more vague)It eroded many individuals' notion of self-determination in the process, and in doing so left them less likely to work towards their own values.
Separately, there's the important notion of what the "staying alive threshold" is. Almost nobody in G7 countries dies of hunger or thirst, and those who do were likely in a crisis not determined by lack of access. Statistically, life expectancy increases with income up to and past $100,000/yr. The spectrum in between is fraught.
And it's absolutely not a straw man argument to say that a UBI is equivalent to a non-contributory pension for the much younger though (unless you believe that state pensions should be too little to survive on!) and well-evidenced that the average person retires earlier when offered state pensions earlier, especially if (unlike many of the workers funding pensions) they've already paid off mortgages.
Why should they use up their finite life for your benefit - unless you are prepared to do the same in return.
If human life has inherent value why do you believe that you should have command of a chunk of somebody else’s?
The capital endowment of society is already used up paying for those who are retired, so you can’t call in that.
Yes, yes, of course some engineers and truck driver and so on were involved. But one person for every 10,000 toasters, because automation.
The lie comes in when the equivalency is made between somebody getting a 'free' anything, and somebody had to sacrifice for that, or work for that. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been for decades.
Automation has made it possible to provide for almost everybody, with a tiny fraction of the inputs it used to take 50 years ago. But folks who's impression of what a factory is, or what work means was made in the 1950's keep exclaiming incredulously "Who will make things, if everybody has a UBI?!"
At root I blame the Protestant Work Ethic. Well-meaning folks want to keep believing that hard work results in a commensurate benefit. This has been a diminishing force in America at least, for decades. In our lifetimes it will disappear.
There won't be jobs for a lot of people to work to add to it.
Ultimately if there are fewer jobs than there are people that want them, then wages get competed down - particularly in the secondary job market where individuals are near interchangeable. Give people money and the wages get competed down further. Which is what we see with the few retired people who continue to work. Very often they will volunteer just for something to do.
Offer a competing public job and you get a different effect. People move to that job and earn a wage. There is no argument about 'living incomes' then - if you are giving up your 8 hours you deserve a living wage. Private employers have to compete to get labour, rather than having it subsidised. Private wages are held up - particularly in the secondary job market which is changed overnight from a 'gig' economy into a 'talent' economy.
The private firms at that level will struggle pass the cost on, because if they do then those on the public job scheme will be permitted to replace them. You can't do that with an unemployed buffer stock. You can with an employed one that you can direct.
The resolution process in the 'battle of the markups' is moved from wage earners to low capital depth operations that frankly add very little value and ought to be competed out of existence by their higher capital depth competitors.