A fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. There is a significant non-majority of the population that will take the money and do absolutely nothing but waste it.
reminds me a lot of Innuendo Studios "Always a bigger fish" video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs
If the people doing the work have to spend taxes so people who don’t work can stay at home, yes, the former get a say in how the latter live.
If it isn’t funding subsistence it isn’t basic income. Whether we flourish that as welfare or bootstraps is rhetorical dressing.
The end result is not anywhere close to similar. UBI will never provide more than the basics. Food & rent and that's about it. If you want more than that, you'll have to work.
I assume your main problem is that you're in a high cost of life area. A national UBI would almost certainly be set at a level appropriate for a median area. If you want to not work and maintain your standard of living you'd likely have to move to a low COL area.
with what money? we already do a lot of that with de facto negative tax rates for the lowest earners.
You bring up a great option though, I have been working to move to a lower COL(see rural) area already. Part of this plan is a draw down on my participation in the labor market, basically a necessity unless I want to commute multiple hours each way. We have gotten by on much less than I do currently, my QOL was very similar, but I was doing more work for myself and my family, rather than my employer or society.
Which is why I picked your comment to reply to. People have this inclination that UBI is going to provide a reasonable amount of money. But if you do the math you'll find that about $1500 a month is about the limit that's feasible. You want to increase the tax rate by an amount that has the average adult paying the same amount in extra taxes as they receive via the UBI. $1500 a month gets to European level taxation rates which I figure is about the limit of acceptable.
A couple can live on $3000 a month in some areas of the country, and perhaps a single person can live on $1500 a month in West Virginia.
*So my original question still stands, what incentive do I have to participate?
As it currently stands ~40% of the profits from my labor is taken by my federal and state government and they are both running at a deficit. That's before accounting for state sales, property, and utilities taxes. It doesn't seem like a small amount currently, and the government's books are not even balanced at current entitlement levels. I have a really tough time coming to the conclusion that the governments would get better with more liabilities, especially when the largest UBI study showed less workforce participation, not more.
You are also conflating my position with that of one who thinks the current corporate protections are a good thing.
And you benefit either way - lifting whole community and reducing homelessness and risky behaviour is good for everyone around, not just that one person. The burden of social issues has always been and will always be on the working people. Ubi doesn't change that part.
There's been a large amount of social conditioning over the past few generations in America that says that if even a tiny slice of the population would abuse a program, that program is worse than the problem itself.
Anyone who's volunteered at something like a food bank will have seen the person in the nice car and nice clothes show up and take food and it requires an unfortunately rare level of benevolence to just move on and remember that you're there for the far larger number of people who really need it.
This problem is sort of caused by how hard Americans work. If you’re working two jobs to make ends meet, it is insulting to see someone lazing on the perceived fruits of your labour.
I mean... if i was given a livable amount of money for no work for a year or two, my quality of life would go up, but I wouldn't quit my job and move somewhere cheaper (where I could get more for that amount of money).
But if i was guaranteed livable amount of money for the rest of my life, that would be a whole different story.
To repeat the point you're replying to - a UBI study that examines human behavior from a set of people who are only guaranteed to be given some livable amount of income for a short period, and not for their entire lives, is completely useless. It isn't actually studying UBI. It's studying "what do people do if I give them $20k or so over a few installments?".
Very boring thing to study. Honestly a waste of time and resources to even bother conducting such a study, the results can be put directly in the rubbish bin.
Texas, notably, recently:
"The Texas Lottery Is Accused Of Fraud, With Calls For It To Be Shut Down"
The Texas Lottery is under fire once again, after Lt. Governor Dan Patrick paid a visit to a store in Austin, where an $83 million dollar winning ticket was sold. Upon arrival, Patrick discovered a warehouse of lottery ticket printing machines, run by a ticket reseller....
<https://ktrh.iheart.com/featured/houston-texas-news/content/...>
Lotteries also manifestly fail in their often-posited goal of funding beneficial services such as education. In reality they shift tax burden from the wealthy (who know better than to play) to the poor (who are desperate even against very poor odds), and cut overall educational funding. See:
"The Big Lie: Gambling and Education Funding" (2012)
“Don’t insult me with those ridiculous claims like “the money is for education!” Money is fungible, and education is already a high-priority budget item. Money raised from slot machines and earmarked for education is simply money that would otherwise have been diverted from some other budget item. The disingenuousness of this claim is jaw-dropping, and it’s even more appalling to me how many people fall for and parrot it.”
<https://www.thinkingpoker.net/2012/10/the-big-lie-gambling-a...>
Perhaps, though, with UBI, that desperation factor would be reduced.
What I do with my 1 EUR has value to me, and might be a waste to you. You might be spending that 1 EUR on a keychain that looks good to you. Personally, that's a waste of money, but not to you.
Are you making this point because you believe that UBI/GMI is not earned, and therefore someone else had to dictate how to be use? Like food stamps?