Universal basic income has the support of 40% of British people, poll reveals - Sensationalist Headlines

Part of the reason it's not happening anytime soon is because of this attitude. After 20 years we'll still wait 20 years until we can wait 20 years and so on

UBI is a bandaid in my opinion to make up for the fact that employers just don't want to pay pay their employees.

Employers can't pay people that don't work for them. When automation takes off, UBI will be the replacement for minimum wage/standard jobs.

Ideally you would move the burden of payroll from the businesses to the government, and then increased taxes on businesses would compensate that move. Ideally...

Ideally you would move the burden of payroll from the businesses to the government, and then increased taxes on businesses would compensate that move. What you propose is utterly pointless and needlessly complicated. It basically boils down to this: You take money away from the companies whose aim it is to generate it through production, funnel it through the state bureaucracy with potentially massive amounts of administrative attrition added to it just to then give it to someone who had statistically most likely nothing to do with the creation of the product that made the money in the first place? When does the worker who made the product get compensated? He will most likely earn less than he does now, because his company pays his wage in tax, and the government pays nitwits to not make the product. The UBI is trying to solve a first world problem that does not exist yet with money it cannot yet - and will probably never be able to - generate.

Who's saying employers aren't paying for the employees? UBI is the bare minimum that everyone gets, if you want to employ someone you have to pay them enough to get them interested in working for you. The taxes come from the parts of the economy that right-wingers have globally been desecrating for decades now, the effective tax rate in a lot of western countries is lower than it has ever before been.

Mate, poverty exists even in first world countries. Yes European countries often have benefits, allowances etc but those are often very conditional and the people who they’re supposed to help are heavily distrusted. A UBI is an unconditional right to an income, a right to a life without poverty or uncertainty, basically. I find it weird that people keep bringing up that it’s trying to solve automation. That’s only really one of the minor potential benefits of a UBI. How the BI is paid for depends on how it is implemented. With a UBI, everyone would receive it, but people who are richer and don’t need the UBI would have to pay it back through insanely high marginal tax rates, which is too disruptive for an economy. That’s why making it a Guarenteed Basic Income is probably the better way to implement it. If you income falls under the poverty line, the governement supplements it. Not literally everyone receives it, but there is a guarenteed income.

Actually, it's been shown that implementing UBI would decrease the cost of administration of social welfare programs which are burdened with cruft and administration in order to discourage people from taking social welfare, and work for the dole programs, etc. The amount of money in state social welfare that actually goes towards poor people is relatively small in comparison to these costs. Implementing UBIwould only amount to a small increase in funding. For example, in Australia, our peak percentage of GDP was 9% in 1996. Economists in Australia predict a UBI would cost 10% of the GDP. I wouldn't classify that as 'massive' amounts - particularly when that doesn't take into account the benefits of increase consumption. Please reason as to why you think a UBI would have 'potentially massive' amounts of administrative attrition added to it when the base system is simpler than current existing social welfare systems. Secondly, yes, you are taking money away from companies whose aim is to generate funds through production. However, companies are currently more powerful than they have ever been, more profitable, and more productive, with lower operating costs and higher profit margins for multi nationals. Currently, the cost of producing something is the lowest its ever been. This trend will only increase as businesses get swallowed up by large conglomerations. There's never been a better time to ensure large companies are paying their taxes, and there's never been a better time to raise them. I wouldn't even consider that the strongest argument against what you're saying though - the fact is, we don't have a problem with production, we have a problem with consumption. UBI trials have been pretty much universally shown to increase consumption drastically. Universal basic income is something we need to be looking at doing now. It's not a first world problem, trials in developing countries have shown it to be just as beneficial for their economy as well. The idea that we cannot yet or will never be able to afford it isn't reflected by the facts. In fact, the general consensus from numerous trials and studies is that it virtually pays for itself. Some readjustment of where we allocate funding may be needed, but it wouldn't be a world ending adjustment, and frankly I don't know a single person who is happy with the proportion of government spending allocated to welfare or is happy with how it is currently managed or tested.

The attractive part of UBI to me is that you could adjust salaries so that UBI + 20-hour work week is the same as a current 40-hour work week, for people working low-skill jobs like retail employees and low-level office workers. We've been sticking with the 40-hour week even though productivity per employee has exploded, while we know how damaging the 40-hour week is to people. We'll be getting rid of a lot of jobs through "automation" (self-serve checkout etc.), it would make sense to split some of the existing jobs into two jobs. Now, you still need to figure out benefits etc. for those extra employees, but removing and simplifying paperwork via UBI (as existing programs can be killed and services provided via UBI instead) is an amazing nuclear option for that. You'll reap auxiliary benefits via this system that help offset potential costs. People will on average be healthier since they don't have to spend so much time working a job nobody could enjoy for extended periods, and the workload being spread over more people makes unemployment a lot easier to solve.

A UBI I don't think tries to solve the inevitable march of automation - but it assists greatly. Ultimately, a UBI should be part of a much broader movement. We need to be adjusting our attitudes towards work and labor as we move into the future because our current system simply isn't sustainable. The more jobs that get automated the more inequality will increase and the current attitude the vast majority of the pop have towards that simple, undeniable fact is going to help noone and end up fucking all of us over.

I don't know what this first post bullshit is, but I'll play. The one of the biggest benefits of some proposed UBI systems is that it drastically reduces the administrative overhead because you are cutting out the need for other welfare programs that are currently present. Moving all of those resources into UBI and having a flat, uniform payout is much easier than deciding such a thing on individual factors. Your first paragraph is also a wild exaggeration. No one is siphoning the profits from those companies and paying them out to people, you are raising their tax rates. It doesn't have to be some ridiculous 99% tax rate where the government basically owns the businesses. But the money they save from automation would be recirculated through taxes. This can be a flat rate, a tax on automation, there's a million things that can happen here that aren't your doomsday scenario. The worker who is actually employed will be paid their salary as usual? I'm not sure how that goes away, he is employed, he gets his salary atop his UBI in this case. UBI is a proposed solution to a very real and inevitable problem first world countries are going to be facing in the very near future. If you don't see how automation is going to shrink the job market and reduce employment, then you need to open your eyes. Implementing UBI doesn't require radical changes to the market or anything of the sort. At most it requires a bit more taxation on companies, and restructuring the welfare programs that already exist. Overall, the price tag on UBI looks expensive. But that money isn't going to be paid out and just sit in a jar. That money is being spent, and recirculated in the economy. So the overall burden of such a program is far less than what the yearly cost would look. The rest of your post I will not entertain.

Many post-war European welfare states actually started out with benefits that basically amounted to a basic income. In the 80’s the sudden prevailing sentiment was that people were abusing the benefits and being lazy and thus they became more and more conditional, sadly. If we were able to pay for it then, why would it be impossible to pay for it now?

You realize the first on the chopping block are white collar jobs, not blue collar? We've already seen big proponents like Tesla actually have to scale back their automated systems because it was actually slowing production down.

Fast food Grocery stores Logistics and transportation Service industry Manufacturing You seem to think this is an overnight process and any failures we see now are here to stay. That's not how technology world. Automation is inevitable, and it will dominate the job market. When that happens is unknown, but it is certain to happen.

that'll show those socialists whats what! We'll make our own socialist paradise with hookers and blackjack!

And it will begin with the jobs which require no to little education - meaning you will have no means to get yourself to a 'higher paying job' as obtaining that education costs money.

Frankly, I think anyone that argues this, is just looking for an excuse to say "I'm a lazy shit, and I wouldn't do anything, so no one else would". I don't know a single person, genuinely, that would sit at home and do literally nothing all year round. They'd all do something.

Accountanting Legal Documentation Support side R&D Secretary You seem to love to assume what I say and act as if you're automated future will actually not bust educated jobs before uneducated jobs. There's already a bit of a panic in the legal industry because the standard way for law students to get the internships and practices required would be cheaper and faster automated. Its not going to begin any one industry, its hitting both educated fields and non-educated fields. You're acting as if a degree will save you when quite frankly the jobs that are most secure are things like trade jobs and nursing.

As opposed to how it is in most American Corporate structures where Shareholders and the CEO are highly compensated at the expense of the work, the quality of service, the quality of content, and the quality of support? Under most UBI structures proposed UBI doesn't cover a lot beyond living costs like food and shelter. The worker still gets compensated as usual at a similar rate because the company still has to compete for workers. Uh, this is an extra-ordinary claim. As usual, I'll require evidence to believe it. We currently live in a democratic oligopoly. The world is run by democracy, but it is influenced by wealth. Wealth is highly concentrated, so highly wealthy individuals hold a high degree of influence, though they do not hold direct control as of yet. As the means of production shift ever more towards an automated paradigm we'll see these titans of industry gain more power, more wealth, and more influence. This is something we must guard against. The founding fathers of the US "Waxed lyrically" about this on end. Automation is on our doorstep and companies have more incentive than ever to invest into it. From the encroaching dangers of certain climate change, the loss of land many countries face is drastic. Companies are well aware of this, and have sought to minimize their physical footprints in order to maximize a lot of their profits. This bodes well for all of us, except for the general toll that automation will take on our work forces through replacement, and specializations. Anyone who believes that automation is thousands of years away is a fool, and anyone who believes there will be a similar number of jobs in the manufacturing community are mistaken. The other drastic issue you can see is the last 18 months have had numerous legal/litigous attacks of the so called "gig economy". This is a major issue, and will be highly unlikely to change in the future.

So, to those who say UBI is not a good idea, I wish to pose a question. One of the easiest sectors for automation to take over right now is Transportation and Warehousing. We are very close to fully self driving cars and trucks, and Amazon has been rapidly expanding and improving their automation in their warehouses. As of 2002, the US employed approximately 3,650,859 in the transportation industry. Let's say companies only need around 10% of this workforce to function in the not so distant future. What do we do with the 3.2 million people who are no longer needed? This question can be posed of a lot of sectors in the future. Finance and Information sectors can be automated fairly easily since it's just data. There are some industries that will take longer than others, of course, but large sectors of the workforce at large are at risk. What do we do when Humans Need Not Apply? Personally I think society will collapse because like I said earlier, it will take a major crisis for UBI to happen due to the glacial pace of government and the unwillingness to help those in need.

My initial reaction is throwing automation out the window, for now. The biggest reason is because Automation as it stands, is not about giving human priority over the jobs they want to do. Its never been about that, its only ever been about our brute force approach to efficiency and to keep up with the fact that we cannot for a second control our own consumption. The fact of the matter is that we over-consume, making the means of production automatic and in so far it never needs to be shut off. The lights never need to be shuttered, will be the single greatest ecological catastrophe we will ever face because when you remove someone's view of the damage they can do they immediately and irreconcilably tend to ignore it or shift blame very easily. We are not in a state to accept automation at such a scale at all. UBI will not fix that. UBI as a system is fantastic when the systems around it work but its not going to fix the core problem: The idea that somehow our labor is both so worthless and yet expensive to work. Like you said with Amazon, they're pushing very hard to automate their warehouses, meanwhile they pay shit wages, treat their workers like absolute shit and reap all of the profits from it. They already rely heavily on the government to pay for the missing wages with food stamps and Medicaid and avoid paying taxes. Do you honestly think we could fund UBI with every company in the US doing this? They're the ones driving us into a corner. However, no one is going to listen. Companies 'reducing' their footprint(that's a fucking laugh) are just more easily masking the and shifting the damage to other countries only care about profits because we have a system that rewards that kind of greed. Some countries will implement UBI and then start getting refugees in to a point where the system will collapse itself because it can't be paid for. Additionally, what are we going to do with 3.2 million? Retrain them? Sure. And then gets automated and we have to retrain. And then that gets automated so we have to retrain. And so on and so on. I honestly don't believe the sciences will ever truly get automated but we already, in the United States, actually suffer from a bloat of STEM majors. We have more STEM majors than we have jobs. And that trend hasn't shifted since 2010. We're just not prepared for automation, bar none and it is incompatible with current and near future society. And people saying, "Well its coming anyway" yeah and its being designed to sell you a better car. Not bring you a better future. Our planet is already fucked, we should be focusing on finding sustainable growth and repair models. Not trying to make it so we retreat from the damage we did.

Forgive me if I'm reading it wrong, but it sounds like, then, your argument against UBI is 'well, we're all fucked anyway so why even bother' -- which seems to run directly at odds with you saying 'but we need to really bother to fix the planet'.

Thank you for responding. Only problem with trying to throw out automation, is everyone would have to throw it out all at once. All nations, all companies. So realistically, we have to drive faster and harder towards automation to beat other countries. Because whoever wins the automation war, will rule the world. If China wins the war, they will be capable of dumping products that cost mere cents on the rest of the world, destroying all other companies across the world. It's not simply progress anymore, it's the new space race. There have been some number crunching and studies showing that UBI would be less wasteful and significantly more efficient in terms of distributing benefits. So much so that dropping every other benefit program and having only UBI would only be slightly more expensive. I believe there were sources and augments towards this earlier in the thread. No amount of retraining is going to help them, yeah. They are unemployable, through no fault of their own. UBI is basically the only hope for them. As for the 'refugee' part, I'm gonna have to agree with Firgof, those who have paid in or are citizens (like most benifit programs are right now) are who gets the UBI, problem solved. (Though then you have second class people situation but, that's something far more complicated to deal with...) Automation isn't going to help the enviroment alone. It needs to go hand in hand with sustainable practices, the abolishment of planned obsolescence, and changes in consumption behavior. Without all of these, automation will likely deplete resources even faster than we already do. I am not special. I am merely an ant among the billions of ants on a single blue pale dot floating in an endless, black ocean. Unable to escape.

Only those that paid in or are citizens? If there isn't entry level work which often leads to small businesses and further emplacement by immigrant families, how are they supposed to become able to get above the poverty line? How are they supposed to survive to a point where they can apply for citizenship. You realize that's exactly how you get incredibly impoverished criminal underbellies, yeah?

Okay but how are you going to fund this? And how are you going to make sure you don't end up with people coming to the country just to take advantage of the free money?

Why do you ask when it's already stated exactly what we realized? As for the 'refugee' part, I'm gonna have to agree with Firgof, those who have paid in or are citizens (like most benefit programs are right now) are who gets the UBI, problem solved. (Though then you have second class people situation but, that's something far more complicated to deal with...)

You guys kinda threw it under the bus when it would be a massive humanitarian crisis.

There is no alternative. There will be massive problems either way. Automation isn't going away. You can't throw it away. You can't get rid of it. Anyone who does just puts themselves at severe economic disadvantage, and will lose quite heavily in an future trade deals.

It will be a massive humanitarian crisis. You're saying 'but we can't allow a massive humanitarian crisis' but are failing to understand that, if you do nothing, guess what: massive humanitarian crisis.

Unfortunately, we're running out of time to wait and come up with all the answers to complicated questions. Either we do something, and have a big humanitarian crisis while we come up with solutions for that crisis, or do nothing and risk having society collapse because we have no backup plan when the economy implodes. I'd love for their to be a solution that doesn't cause a humanitarian crisis, but we don't have one. And doing nothing is worse.