Universal basic income vs government provided living utilities

A general principle is that if you expand the money supply without adding to the goods and services then it is inflationary.

And a universal basic income would definitely expand the money supply.

The only people unable to would be the severely disabled, and a UBI wouldn't be an appropriate way to look after them.

If those jobs were worth paying to do in the first place then the private sector would already be doing them. You wouldn't need a guaranteed government job.

It would, but it would also stimulate production by enabling more consumption. It's consumption that drives production, not the other way around.

This is nothing more than an expression of dogma. It's quite literally: by definition what the private sector does is worthwhile, so if the private sector isn't doing it, it can't be worthwhile.

Aaaaand since I'm no on about guaranteed government jobs - something I'm very much against, what, exactly, is your argument?

What I said:

In no way states a guaranteed government job. To qualify, you have to be working, education, training or donating their time.

I work (I'm private sector, no matter how much the government would prefer it otherwise), so I'd qualify.

I quit, went back to uni, I'd qualify.

I quit, form a voluntary group to talk to elderly people, I qualify.

I quit, and decide I'd like to stay in bed and watch Netflix, I don't.

Don't you think the U-standing-for-universal is a bit of a problem in that sentence?

Also, you would have to define "severely". I have a stepsister withs cerebral palsy. She has trouble walking and trouble making herself understood. Yet she has a job (which involves a lot of standing and some walking) --- and I strongly doubt it's a charitable gesture on the part of her employer. She does the job quite well it seems to me. It gives her all the things jobs usually give people (role in society, human contact, etc.).

Yet I can easily imagine someone with the same degree of cerebral palsy who simply couldn't pull it off owing to a different personality. We're on slippery ground here, no matter what system we have.

It's easier to type than Reverse Income Tax, or to start making RIT a thing.

I don't believe in it being truly universal, for example it should be restricted to citizens, so that economic migrants cannot access it.

You fixate on the employment element

I've known a number of disabled people, of varying severity, over the years. Some cannot work, yet they can learn (and enjoyed doing so) and volunteer in some manner.

If someone is so severely disabled they are unable to achieve any of those, then alternative measures should be visited as a UBI would be unlikely to cover their living costs, and they would need a more tailored solution to their needs.

So entry level jobs will be better for the entry level worker because they won't be flipping burgers, robots will.

I realize this is just an example you're citing, but to follow it through, what about people like refugees?

And what do you mean by "economic migrants"? Immigrants, right? Would you let them starve if they lost their job? I'm not saying you would, but then you'd have to wheel out some other solution. By which I mean that things are starting to get complicated again.

Why?

yet we were all only too happy to turn them away seven years prior to that...

I'm not sure that's true.

It might seem that way because we're basically at what by modern standards is considered full emplyment, but the key phrase is "modern standards."

However, if you looked at the average American family today and the average American family 150 years ago, I bet you wound find that the average family in 1860s America had more members working, and working longer hours, in order to survive.

Today, there are plenty of households that live on one parent's income -- or with one parent working full time and one working part time -- and children's labor is rarely necessary for survival. Go back 150 years, and if they were rural and engaged in subsistence farming, both parents had to work to keep the house warm and food on the table, and they didn't work just 40 hours a week, either. On top of that, kids would be working on the farm from a young age. If they were urban, there's a good chance the kids would be working in factories alongside their parents at a very young age, and doing so in order to contribute to their families' survival. Today, minors' labor is heavily regulated, their hours are limited, and most teenagers who work do so to get money for their own purposes, not because their families need it in order to eat.

I think you missed the point of that story.

Plus, a scarce commodity, *transparency*, instead of things like indirect, three layers deep, subsidies.

just off the top of my head, what if the UBI, in households where it's the only or primary source of income, was arranged such that housing expenses (rent/mortgage and utilities) were auto-drawed off the top each month so someone was no free to blow it all on meth and still be homeless at the end of the month?

then you're essentially subsidizing landlords directly while removing the point of economic self determination.

you're also setting up the need for testing an even greater proportion of the population than those who already are subjected to such invasions... statistically, for no good reason and at a financial loss.

another one of those universal healthcare social benefits? we have access to rehab... seems its in the public interest to get junkies clean.

That seems like such an edge case (I'm assuming universal healthcare here, including drug treatment) that it wouldn't be worth the bureaucracy.

Damn. Beat me by two minutes. *shakesfist*

I think you missed the point of Jesus telling his followers to sell their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor.

This the best you got? Just parroting my line back at me? "You cannot serve both God and Mammon." You can be a Christian, or you can believe in economic deregulation, tax cuts for the rich and so on. You can't do both.

You can accumulate vast wealth and still serve God and keep his commandments. There are several examples of very wealthy people in the Bible who were commended for their faithfulness and NOT told to disperse their wealth.

I suspect Dayton's correct. Without ever having read the book (I've seen The 10 Commandments though) I understand religion's purpose is to calm the masses while taking their money.

Provided that you are a camel and very, very small. Otherwise, there might be a bit of a hump ahead.

You know they did not have "eyes of needles" in the way we think of them today back when that was written.

So it was no problem for camels to boogey on through. (rolls eyes)

....no. Their needles were pretty much the same as the ones we have now. A sewing needle is a sewing needle.

The proper objection is that 'camel' is probably a mistranslation and it actually referred to rope or cable, not the animal.
However that objection doesn't really work because "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" was a common expression among the Jews in antiquity and was used to mean "it's really hard for..."
It turns up in the Quran too:

The impious, who in his arrogance shall accuse our doctrine of falsity, shall find the gates of heaven shut; nor shall he enter till a camel shall pass through the eye of a needle.

I always figured that "it's really hard for" anyone to get into heaven. Rich, poor, middle class, anyone.

Because the way I see it God only promised to save a "remnant" of humanity from hell.

You're a Calvinist eh? Pretty interesting.

Why do you say that?

Because what you just said is Calvinist theology?