How does the economics look for that? It would seem many would be disincentivized to work, which would raise wages in order to attract work, which would make the basic income worth less.
If you want Netflix, eating out at a restaurant, playing Games or any sort of entertainment? If you want a life, you need to work. There is nothing disincentivized against work unless those people want to live like zombies.
If it's half the price to run a robot compared to using a human, then jobs can be eliminated even if the people want to work.
I hate my job. If they started a UBI that actually covered all the basics - food, housing, healthcare, etc... I would quit and I'm not even in a low paying job.
That is what I would considered as basic. It is suppose to keep you alive. Not for you to afford meat, fruit or coca cola. Housing enough to keep you warm and sleep. Not enough space ( hardly any at 6m2 ) to let you move around. And this means workers would have to be treated better now they have an option to quit without begging for food on the table.
It'd have to be some sort of partnership w/ govt and localities to workout making it so people who need homes the most have easier access to them, by freeing up the land, so they don't need to relocate across country or so it doesn't seem like they're being put in concentration camps or something horrible like that... If I live in a rural town, they need to do something to ensure there's homes for everyone who wants one there somehow. If they need to buy or lease land and throw up some 30k yurts, so be it...
On the bright side those who pay higher rents will probably pay less as there will be a lot more rentals available.
Rising wages means more competition over the same resources, leading to inflation. Even inflation in some industries/products will affect the CPI.
Where would the UBI come from? Presumably it would be from those who automate. This means your claim of lower prices will likely be marginal - the people need to support themselves whether they or a robot does the work. So UBI would mostly offset.
Inequality shouldn't be that out of whack anyways and having a max speed on it could encourage better equality.
Personally if I had UBI I'd work more on side-projects and try to get some recurring income coming in...I'm still trying to do that but it's harder w/ all the distractions of doing client/freelance work..and the depression when I can't meet bills because I'm having a ADHD poor-motivation month, or anti-social-can't be bothered w/ marketing to find new clients month... both of which seem like every month since the Pandemic began...
I'd hope a lot more people would actually go into science fields and do research when they can afford to go to school and have a guaranteed home and basic necessities...
Honestly a utopia to me would see 95% of kids becoming scientists and technologists, the rest in the arts... and everything else being automated and we work on solving things like aging, space travel, and climate change.
It makes sense to tax money where there is money - income and gains.
Ah, "you will own nothing" accelerated! This seems like the fever dream of a World Economic Forum plutocrat. Let's make it so people will literally never be able to own a house because of prohibitive taxes. This will solidify the domination of those who already have houses, like older generations, while completely selling younger people down the river with the promise of a tiny handout that will be totally devalued by time it reaches you.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how money works beyond a small $ amount.
Nobody just keeps millions of dollars in a bank account. When you have lots of money, you own businesses which generate income. The value of those businesses is not fixed, but constantly changing, and dependent on the values of other businesses. So it’s very difficult to assess “PersonX has $Y million” because the value of the companies that they own changes all the time.
They might have $300k in cash, $700k in stocks, and be the founder of a company worth $40m, but they can’t just spend or be taxed on that $40m. The company is significantly less valuable without them running it. And if they tried to sell some of it, then the value would drop and they’d be worth even less. But their net worth still says $41m. How do you tax that?
We don’t tax ownership of companies today because it’s WAY too complicated and convoluted, and would cause significant problems. Instead, we tax the transactions. Meaning that if they sell half of their $40m company for $20m, then they have to pay taxes on that $20m that got converted from “fake money” (company valuation) to “real money” (cash from selling). That’s “Capital Gains” and is taxed today.
Or we also currently tax payments, aka dividends. When a company converts value within itself to cash for its owners. If the $40m company makes $4m in profit and pays that out to the founder, they pay income tax on it.
But the fact that they own a company that’s “worth” $40m shows up in their net worth, even though that’s not real money.
If it is funded by eliminating the preference for non-labor income in taxes by bringing up taxes on other income (which also itself reduces the incentive to automation created by premium taxes on labor), that's not true.
Compared to means-tested aid with duplicative bureaucracy to that which already exists for income taxation? Depends on a number of factors, including whether you find it by closing the gap between labor and non-labor taxes so that you aren't punishing people for hiring, whether and how you adjust minimum wage in light of it, how you set the level of basic income relative to productive capacity, whether you index it to a revenue stream divided among the eligible population, or target a constant real income level, or set the level by some other means, etc.
Even if the vast majority did make that decision (which I don't think is plausible under any UBI that would be sustainable in even the very short term in the near future) it would eliminate wage signals it would be a result of shifted wage signals, and the response of the market to those signals.
Basically, what we had during the pandemic was a mini-UBI experiment (even though it was not universal). Wages at the low end went up - exactly what you would want to see under a successful UBI program (because of giving people alternatives). Unfortunately, we funded this one via deficits (hence why the rich also got richer). If it was funded via a tax, we'd see the lower end wages increase, and the upper middle/upper class get squeezed a bit (which is completely intentional).
The last effect would likely trigger a voting backlash (since upper-middle/upper class folks have lots of voting power), but it's still UBI working as intended
So, a classic means-tested benefit experiment?
Do you honestly believe that is not happening now in ghastly amounts?
That is basically the definition of market failure, which is of course an acknowledged problem with the current economic system we have. That's why people are discussing alternatives.