UBI is this generation's fusion - it's going to be 10 years away until the late 2070s, if at all.
Pilots have been done all over the place [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots
It would cause lots of things to increase in price that are currently priced low simply because someone's parents happened to be from a poorer country that did not speak English, and so on and so forth.
Without that, the benefits of UBI can never be observed.
I mean, that's you changing the definition of what a pilot is. Have you looked into how they were conducted in those countries and how they determine success/failure?
Only once all the lowest paid workers (who ostensibly are doing their job because they have no other option) can drop their jobs and negotiate better compensation can the effects of UBI be seen.
2030 is much too soon for UBI to be an established norm, and even more much to soon for economies to support it at a level which would radically change this dynamic rather than just mitigating perverse incentives that exist at the edges of means-tested poverty support programs.
You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.
UBI enables meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it.
Another way to think of it is as a negative income tax - as a simple example the equation could be ((income * 0.2) - 20000), so if you make no money you get 20k, if you make 100k you pay no taxes and get nothing, if you make 200k you owe 20. This is using a flat tax rate for simplicity but then everyone get taxes 20% and everyone gets 20k. It's similar to public school - everyone pays for it and everyone gets it, but the purpose is to ensure it's there for people that wouldn't be able to afford it privately.
As another way to think about it - do bonuses disincentivize workers? At least personally that just makes me want to do more because it's freeing up a bunch of mental energy I need to spend on finances, and then I can focus on important things aside from basic survival
I don't personally know anyone that would opt for 20k/yr over their current salary, but I know several people making over 250k that want to make more to drive their sense of societal value.
I don't agree with it, but if you want to maintain the threat of poverty to force labor you can still do that with UBI
$20k is not quite enough, but I can tell you that I lived the life of my dreams on $25k a year from 2016-2018. If I could guarantee that lifestyle forever I would take it over my current $300k+ job in a microsecond.
But government policy (even that notionally of a Constitutional character, which most UBI proposals wouldn’t be) isn’t a permanent guarantee (see abortion rights for a recent example), and if that was really true, it doesn’t take long living a $25k lifestyle on a $300k income to be able to save and make yourself a firmer guarantee of a $25k lifestyle forever than government policy would ever do.
Approximately no one does it, because as much as people making lots of money might rhetorically appeal to the attractiveness of such an idea, no one actually making that money now feels it enough to act on it.
The people who would be content to rely on minimal poverty support are, largely, doing that already, since we have such programs now and they have a much stronger disincentive to additional income than would exist with UBI due to means testing, which takes benefits away rapidly (sometimes more than 1:1) with additional income.
It's much harder to live a $25k lifestyle while working a demanding full-time job than it is while having all your time free, though.
- You can choose a low cost of living area.
- You have plenty of time to cook all your own meals.
- You can fix your own car.
- You can travel during off-times when prices are lower.
And so on.
Almost certainly the same number as are making 200k now that cease additional effort beyond what is necessary to make 20k, i.e., 0.
Probably even at lower levels more people would work (at least in the open economy paying full taxes) than dobcurrently, since pushing any clawback of benefits from the low levels and high marginal rates that they kick in with means tested benefit programs to somewhere higher on the income spectrum at a lower marginal additional rate reduces the disincentive to additional work compared to the status quo.
I don't think so, because making $20k usually requires much more than 10% of the time and effort needed to make $200k.
A lot of people making 200k+ have grown accustomed to the kind of lifestyle that income enables (nice house, nice car, nice restaurants, foreign vacations, sending their kids to private school, etc)-and couldn’t afford to keep doing that on 20k. Given the choice between 200k job and 200k lifestyle, and no job and 20k lifestyle, I think the majority of people already accustomed to the first option would choose to continue in it. Also, a lot of people on 200k+ already have more than 20k of savings/investments, so if they are willing to run those down, they could choose the no job/20k lifestyle today, no need to wait for UBI-yet few do.
Most people don’t settle for poverty level income if additional effort provides a better standard of living, and UBI increases the degree to which that is true compared to means-tested aid programs (which is why, under a different name, it was proposed as a right-libertarian alternative to such programs long before becoming popular on the left.)
Edit: And of course, what would be the motivating factor for someone to give their best possible work, if the other 12 guys in their position get paid the same for less quality work?
UBI gives that to everyone, giving everyone a shot at developing their merit.
The merit comes from people being able to take risks that otherwise only the wealthy could do
2. "what would be the motivating factor" They don't, UBI is not communism. And what you say is already true at many places, and the world is still turning. The motivating factor, with UBI, is the same without it: to achieve more. UBI would just let you not fall into homelessness and / or under the poverty threshold.
I really do like the idea of a country keeping all of its citizens above the poverty line though. If UBI isn't the way, then some other way - maybe providing goods and meals instead of money? Taking a page from the Sikh's book.
How do you figure? Why wouldn’t landlords, businesses, etc just adjust their prices based on the UBI amount. They’ll be happy to collect more money courtesy of the taxpayers.
The same reason why they don’t capture all income now: “landlords, businesses, etc.” aren’t one single monopolistic entity, there is price competition in markets for necessities that aren't regulated public utilities. There may at times be (natural or artificial) supply constraints in one or anothet market, but those are (1) separate issues from UBI, and (2) natural poison points which create political pressure for resolution.
UBI isn’t “no one gets paid on top of UBI for value delivered”. UBI does nothing to limit that motivation.
Meritocracy is already dead (if it existed in the first place).
As for a career, other people finding your work so valuable that they're willing to pay you $$$$ for it is the ultimate compliment.
This seems kinda backwards - UBI gives people the ability to take more risks. Success is mostly determined by how many bets you're able to make, and UBI lets people place more bets. There's plenty of people that would want to start a business but don't have parents able to loan or gift them the money. You'd be opening up more possibilities for people, and people naturally want to do useful things. I'm not sure what hard jobs you're imagining but anything valued by society will still get done because people want to see themselves as valuable.
I think the confusion here is because you have a false premise that there is a meritocracy now - UBI is something that could help us get towards a meritocracy. Right now it doesn't matter how good you would be at something if you can't afford to do it
In a true meritocracy everyone must have the same starting point and rise up within the ranks based on their merits from there. In our society we do not all start at the same place. There are people born into wealth and people born into poverty. So some people have to struggle harder to get to the same place as others where born into. Essentially an anti-meritocracy system.
If anything UBIs will help make the system more meritocratic since the ones the bottom no longer need to climb the first hill.
So is having a rich family. The article provides a long list of examples of great artists who's success is largely enabled by already being wealthy, not necessarily being the best. Even just being lucky enough to already be established puts you far ahead of people trying to break in. I can walk out the door and likely find a job in my industry because I have lots of experience to point to and references who will vouch for me. I think I'm good at my job, but I was also in the right place at the right time to get it and now I'm a safe bet for someone who needs my skills, even if I'm not the best bet. Someone who's trying to break in that's ten times more talented than me might never catch that break. I know for a fact that I've hired lesser candidates because I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great.
Meritocracy is pretty far down the list as a factor of success in my experience.
There's also an economic side to this: Higher skill most often has higher costs, so it would not be rational to overshoot in a business setting.
In an Art setting higher skill very rarely commands a higher price. At least for the Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, etc) producer skill is hardly the most requested property. IOW it's mostly a matter of provenience and history of the artwork in question, not much the skill required to produce it. Also, for Music, Visual Arts, Performative Arts (excluding Sports!) personal preferences seem to dictate a substantially larger proportion of the price level than performer competence.
Unless the work is paid highly enough for people to take the job, no? What prevents a company from raising wages?
How does UBI kill meritocracy?
> none of the hard jobs gets done.
Hard jobs that society doesn't value won't get done by humans, but hard jobs that society does value will certainly get done. UBI does not remove free markets, and if anything increases the reward of working hard if large swaths of the labor force do decide to drop out.