Funnily, I'm okay with people not working if they didn't want to. Most people would end up getting bored doing nothing after a few months and work with what they like to do anyway.
I'm OK with people not working if they don't want to, too, as long as those people are OK with subsistence-level living standards. I don't see why able-bodied people who are capable of working but just don't want to should live a comfortable life at the expense of the working taxpayer.
I've grown up amongst poverty and while I don't particularly like the term (as it tends to be deployed in aid of demagoguery), there really is a element of 'welfare culture' in effect, and having been on welfare myself (and treated like a prince because bizarrely the system was obviously classist: so Ed you're an out of work indie game dev and you're currently learning something called 'Nim'? "well that's just great then have some money". Go in there as a bricklayer and say you are looking but haven't found any work the past few weeks: here are 20 forms). I was always very impressed on the knowledge these working class labourers would have of the welfare system, because in their situation it really made a difference.
Their attidue was: (and who can blame them) fuck the govt they don't give a shit about me, the more I get / the more I can play the system, the better.
UBI from their perspective would be total victory. No more queuing no more forms or interviews, just free money for ever. But what then?
If the UBI was only sufficient for survival / dignity but not enough for luxury I think the psychological topology chances a lot and what could be previously described as 'getting one over on this enemy' now can only be described as your own failure.
I mean, UBI never meant "Extravagant money." It has always meant something akin to "basic standards for survival."
The entire idea from what I understand is that you should be able to survive just fine, not have it pay for your 98" micro OLED :P
> the longer you stay away from gainful employment, the more marketable skills you lose.
I sorta relate to this as someone who's been coasting by at my current job for last year or so. But I'm also working to upskill myself actively. You bring a good point but I don't know what teh solution to that would be.
That's one of the main points of UBI as a replacement for means-tested welfare [0]: eliminating the perverse incentives against maximizing outside work and for expending energy into working the system that exists with means-tested welfare that has complex eligibility rules and is rapidly cut with outside income. By making the clawback much slower and starting much higher up the income scale through the tax system, UBI, compared to the status quo, rewards gaining additional income in the labor (or other) market and learning skills other than navigating a welfare system.
There is a reason that UBI—under the name “negative income tax” because of the political valence of taxation on that corner of the political universe—was originally a right-libertarian proposal.
> I'm OK with people not working if they don't want to, too, as long as those people are OK with subsistence-level living standards
There's no plausible way a UBI provides anything substantially better than that any time in the near (likely, the lifespan of abyone now living) future, so that shouldn't be a problem.
[0] Perhaps even stronger if UBI is also seen as a (partial or full) replacement for the minimum wage, which could be justified because, unlike means-trsted welfare, it doesn't tail off with income and provides a basic support level for all—there is then no reason that employment must also serve that minimal support purpose, which makes it possible to offer employment whose marginal value to the employer is less than would minimally support an employee, but which would still be positive (and in some cases still have more long-term value to the employee because of experience that could contribute to more valuable future employment.)
It's sort of like telling yourself that you'll go back to school. Some people do, but most don't.
Right, but wouldn't that be similar? Obviously there are going to be people who are going to say "screw it, I'm going to live like this" on a basic survival-wage UBI, but I doubt a majority would want to.
I do support UBI, but I also expect that it would have complicated effects.