Universal basic income

[SWP's back]

What you could do is means test it so that no one/household takes home less than £25k per year. That would wipe 80% of the £1trn out and make it workable.

 

[lancs blue]

Robots and AI will replace most peoples jobs in the next twenty years, so we will need to spread that wealth to humans, other wise we will have a world revolution against the corporate world.

Yes the pace at which science and technology progresses must not be underestimated. 50 years ago the most powerful computers in the world possessed far less processing power than today's average smart phone. Imagine what a further 50 years of advances will bring.

 

[Fame Monster]

Hard to wrap your head around it on the face of things, but the reason there's more and more conversation around it is that the places that have tried it have seen positive results.

Think the latest trial in Finland found the people who were put on UBI ended up taking on more paid employment than the ones who didn't.

It also saves on a lot of the costs involved of administrating a means tested system.

There are health and wellbeing benefits that save the public money in the long term and they also found that people used it as an opportunity to take on a job with fewer hours and then use spare time to do volunteering and care work (which again saves the govenrnment money). Believe it or not, the vast majority don't want to sit around on their arse all day. Laziness is not the main reason why a lot of people remain long term unemployed

Even if you were to provide a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis on it that found it's worth doing, some people will remain ideologically opposed to the idea.

It sounds bold but maybe the next few years, with so much rebuilding to be done, will require us to be bold. We're going to hit rock bottom in the wake of all this and we won't have much to lose if we were to try and become a world leader in rebuilding a greener economy. Ideas like UBI will have to come into play.

The Finnish researchers said it didn't provide an incentive to work in comparison to the control group if I'm not mistaken.

Plus the fundamental point at which UBI falls down is that it doesn't reduce the financial inequality between those in work and out of work unlike the current means-tested benefits system.

 

[stonerblue]

£400 x 52 weeks = £20,800 p.a.

£20,800 p.a. x 52m adults in the UK = £1,081,600,000,000 (£1.1 trillion) (i.e. 10x the £100bn the UK spends in total at present on welfare) and well over 1/3rd of the UK's total Gross National Product

This has the total spend at 700 odd billion?
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/brief-guides-and-explainers/an-obr-guide-to-welfare-spending/

 

[stonerblue]

The Finnish researchers said it didn't provide an incentive to work in comparison to the control group if I'm not mistaken.

Plus the fundamental point at which UBI falls down is that it doesn't reduce the financial inequality between those in work and out of work unlike the current means-tested benefits system.

How can it not reduce inequality when everyone would get the same amount.
The Finnish experiment used 2000 unemployed youth and was not universal

 

[SWP's back]

How can it not reduce inequality when everyone would get the same amount.
The Finnish experiment used 2000 unemployed youth and was not universal

Because you’re still giving UBI to people earning £100k

 

[Mon Autre]

The Finnish researchers said it didn't provide an incentive to work in comparison to the control group if I'm not mistaken.

Plus the fundamental point at which UBI falls down is that it doesn't reduce the financial inequality between those in work and out of work unlike the current means-tested benefits system.

It's not a magic bullet by any means. And there will be downsides. But i think it would be at least a start if people opened up their minds to the idea. Some people try to shut down the conversation from the off with with very reductive arguments like "free money, how stupid". There's obviously more to it than that and there are indirect financial benefits from schemes like this. I don't think the idea is going to go away and i'll be watching with interest how it works in other countries.

It's pretty clear that our current welfare system isnt working so I'm open to new creative ways of looking at it.

 

[SWP's back]

This has the total spend at 700 odd billion?
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/brief-guides-and-explainers/an-obr-guide-to-welfare-spending/

Going off this (pensions cost £100bn):

• 16 March 2016. In the financial year ending 2017, the UK government spent £264 billion on welfare, which made up 34% of all government spending. In the financial year ending 2013, the government spent £253 billion on welfare, around 35% of government spending.
  
  https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/gove...rticles/howisthewelfarebudgetspent/2016-03-16
  

 

[stonerblue]

Because you’re still giving UBI to people earning £100k

That is a sticky point and one which will never go away in a relatively wealthy system/economy but;
they could give up work
they could decline the payment
they could give it away to charidee
they could employ someone.

those that earn 20k could;
feed themselves better
turn the heating/water/electric/internet on
go to work
sleep at night
volunteer

 

[SWP's back]

That is a sticky point and one which will never go away in a relatively wealthy system/economy but;
they could give up work
they could decline the payment
they could give it away to charidee
they could employ someone.

those that earn 20k could;
feed themselves better
turn the heating/water/electric/internet on
go to work
sleep at night
volunteer

That’s why I put this earlier:

What you could do is means test it so that no one/household takes home less than £25k per year. That would wipe 80% of the £1trn out and make it workable.