Universal Basic Income...

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... may turn out essential for the future survival of human civilization.

http://io9.com/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-us-from-the-robot-1653303459

not in my lifetime. Too much greed, selfishness, gluttony, apathy, inhumanity, status conscious culture and self adulation. Too many "people" looking for any reason they can fabricate to look down their nose at human beings.

Seems like a good idea, except which is it....enough income for a comfortable living, or enough income for basic survival but not a comfortable living? I think it would be nessisary for it to cover a comfortable living there are plenty of resources in the world for people to thrive not just be scraping by. So I like the concept but people if life for everyone is just surviving without the means to enjoy life or thrive that would be a very depressing world.

enough for basic nutrition and a warm, dry, private place to sleep, at least.

Milton Freidman was partial back in the 70s to a negative income tax, I think I remember hearing Nixon actually considering it before his presidency was destroyed by scandal. It's interesting idea, cutting out the bureaucratic middle man and giving it straight to the people shouldn't be more offensive then funding these massive government programs which are mismanaged and cannibalize themselves.

A Universal basic living arrangement for subsistence, including shelter, is an excellent idea as it is a well known fact in science, both biology and psychology that human beings do not, and cannot flourish in creativity and productivity unless their basic human needs in subsistence are met.

Fear kills productivity and creativity.

A well fed and sheltered culture of human beings, without constant worry that their basic subsistence will be taken away from them, will lead to great strides in human BEING and the civilization environment, in general.

But to put IT into action, can be a conundrum, as many of the folks in charge have psychopathic tendencies, without empathy for their fellow human beings.

The not caring cycle is sad, but true, as a disease in politics, and all other areas, where human domination reins over others of the same species, most sadly of all.

But I have hope for change, mainly as the free flow of information between humans for potential cooperation, is now greater than ever with broadband accessibility for the herd of human beings, who do have the potential for positive change, if properly motivated, by incentive, and reward.

I think a universal basic income is a good idea. Enough for shelter and food. But there should also be the opportunity to work and earn above this basic income. That way people will still have incentive to achieve and earn, and others who can't will still get enough to survive.

So for people incapable of working they'd be destined to essentially no quality of life and just basic survival? See that sort of thing makes the whole idea much less appealing. I mean ok even if you don't for sure belive it say hypothetically there is enough of resources to go around and provide everyone the means of a comfortable living..........why then would we still need people with only the basic means of survival. I'd hope our culture would more towards entirely eliminating all class division. You're idea would still leave room for that.

But what would be the incentive for people to be productive?


If it's possible, that would be great. But I don't believe it.


I think there will always be classes and cliques. It's human nature.

I agree, cut out the massive bureaucracy and fold all the currnent programs into one simplified one, and it might even come out cheaper than what we're currently doing. Trim back the military and the criminal justice system, and we could probably give everyone a pretty decent amount without even touching the tax rates, I even suspect that there would be a bit of a positive feedback loop where less desperate people equaled less crime which means more savings, etc.

I'd always put this in the "nice idea but totally unaffordable" category, a bit of a leftie fantasy. Seeing it endorsed by Friedman, Hayek and Dox is starting to win me over.

Looking at the numbers quickly, if the UK folded all welfare and pension spending, it could give everybody over the age of 20 about £5000 a year. That isn't enough. According to the University of Edinburgh's advice for students, the cost of living in much of the UK is about £7500. A living wage (allowing you TV, a mobile phone, a car, etc.) is more like £12,000. Childless couples can make efficiency savings, but single parents will struggle.

If all government spending was direct wealth redistribution then that would just about work, but people with no other revenue stream would be hand to mouth and unable to afford education or healthcare. And ofc the justice system would not work.

So to go with this drastic change in government spending we'd need a drastic change in government income. Just collecting all the tax we currently ask for but don't get would only raise £6000 per person (combined with above abolition of welfare and pensions), and that's optimistic. A big hike in VAT would raise the living wage but only have a small effect on the cost of living, though it may cause people to do their "value added" shopping in the US or China. A mansion tax wouldn't raise enough. A 100% inheritance tax wouldn't raise enough. 50% on the highest earners wouldn't raise enough. Trimming subsidies might help, but I'm relying on this website, which doesn't make it clear what is a "job creation" subsidy and what is actually something important.

I'm still not sure it's actually a viable policy. I'd like to see a more detailed analysis by someone who knows more about government spending, or even a country trialling it.

You can't live in Greater London on 12,000 Pounds a year, frankly.

Isn't 12,000 pounds a year the point where social services stop being provided for a person?

The rent in many apartments is at least 600 Pounds a months; then you have to pay Council Tax.

Meat is much more expensive there than in the US (though bread is cheaper).

Petrol (Gas) is probably about the equivalent of $8 a gallon; it was as high as $10 a gallon not too long ago.

Clothes cost, generally, about the same in Pounds as what it costs in the US in Dollars.

Local transport is quite a bit more expensive in London than NYC, though railway costs are similar, or perhaps somewhat less, than that found in the US. We pay $2.50 a ride on the bus or subway here in NYC, which is about 1 Pound 60 or so. For a "day pass" on the Tube, it's about the equivalent of $12!

The basic premise of the linked article seems all wrong to me, although maybe it's not. I am not an expert in global economics. The basic premise of the article is that there are fewer and fewer jobs because the jobs traditionally done by humans are increasingly done by computers and robots. But is this true or did the jobs just change in nature and get moved to other countries?

The article gives a number of U.S.-centric examples of disappearing and disappeared jobs (such as travel agent) and says plausibly that the people outnumber the jobs at a higher number in the U.S. than previously. I can believe that. But what I can't believe is that there are fewer jobs overall. It looks like what actually happened is that many of the jobs created by the rise of computers and robots (such as building computers and robots) are now being done on the cheap in 3rd world countries. That includes not just the physical manufacture but also the chip design and tech support. The article doesn't address or even acknowledge that despite having a picture of a factory in China. The problem isn't lack of jobs. It's lack of jobs that can't be done cheaper non-locally.

I'm all for streamlining the welfare behemoth. If Universal Basic Income does that, then great. But where would the money come from? And even more importantly (since the money maybe could come from tax-penalizing the companies that outsource labor) what would be the consequences of uncoupling work from subsistence on such a vast scale? If literally anyone can live "comfortably" without ever working, where does that comfort come from? Does that mean the people who provide the comfort (grow and make the food, maintain the buildings etc.) get lots more money? Enough to incentivize them to continue going every day to the work on the farm? Does the global economy slowly tilt until the 3rd word countries that are doing all the actual manufacturing work morph into 1st world countries and vice versa? There are a lot of consequences to such a decision. Its implications have to be thought through on a global as well as national scale.


edited to add; one of the commentors under the article is thinking this through. I'll quote part of his comment where he thinks through the implications:

^^^
From a personal perspective and an analytical one as well, I worked for the Government in a field that supports the morale, welfare and recreation of the military, through a multitude of programs ranging from community support to food service.

In the beginning when the dinosaur typewriters, and filing systems were all that helped the support group to run the business machine, there were initially over one hundred employees doing this job, but with the advent of computers and increasing efficiency and speed of tasks that computers could do, the jobs begin to dwindle, and after two decades, the administration department was down to five, with several people wearing several hats, including me, running the athletic department, administrating the entire program when the department head was out, doing financial management for the entire department, IT support, personnel, accounting, payroll, and the list goes on.

An open door policy meant running the computer and attempting to supervise people at the same time, with one hand on the keyboard, one ear on the phone, one eye on the person needing computer support across the hall, and the other eye on the employees needing supervision in my office.

Well, it's no wonder that I eventually fell to total human exhaustion, as it was either do the job, or be replaced by someone who could, out of a pool of willing folks available globally to get a job with golden handcuff's of government security, done, at least for a while.

There's always someone out there somewhere that can do more, if one looks hard enough, and with access to a global pool of employees, that contingency was always real for me.

And of course there was the autism thingy, to adapt to, additionally.

It did not exactly help.

The problem is, that in human cognition, mechanical cognition, the stuff of working computers, as mentioned in many of my other posts here, does repress social cognition, and social cognition does repress mechanical cognition, so humans are definitely not evolved to multi-task, certainly in not this way, and science indicates truly not in any other way, efficiently.

So the problem here is, humans are not machines and machines are not humans, and machines still do a poor job of acting like humans and humans do a very poor job acting like machines, so even if one is lucky enough to have a job where has to do both social and mechanical cognition tasks at the same time, basically, eventually, unless one is some kind of superman, that people literally did refer to me, based on my cognitive ability of not complaining when I did it, when I did it to their satisfaction..

Yes, one is basically eventually screwed.

There are still good jobs out there that one can get tenure in, and last for many years, but they are dwindling fast when one looks at the FULL LIFE SPAN, AND what it takes to hold out as human, as when humans break, there are no easy replacement parts or upgrades to buy.

They just go out to pasture, and either do the phoenix thing rising from the ashes, or disappear into oblivion, as metaphor.

Humans are not machines as machines do not have emotions, and machines are not humans as they do not have emotions, so basically any society that attempts to suggest that one can do the full job of the other, in my opinion, is truly insane, and just a ticking time bomb, waiting to do, one knows what!

I'm retired so no longer an issue for me, but I do know the consequences up close and personal of human being attempting to play the role of machine and human at the same time. The end result can be extremely ugly, and I personally certainly have the medical records at 100 pages of medical documentation at the time of my apex of total human exhaustion stimulated illness to prove that part of it, conclusively as such.

And I'm not exactly a fragile adult.

I am rather to extremely robust at 6FT or so and 225LBS; this can't be any easier for more fragile folks. The myelin sheaths on nerves are definitely thinner for smaller fragile folks, in science talk.

But at the point of TOTAL human exhaustion, my 94 year old crippled aunt had more spunk for life than me, as her emotions were not TOTALLY BURNT OUT LIKE ME, then at age 47, at yes, precisely half her age.

Emotions do motivate us human beings, for the long run, as adrenaline definitely does eventually run out, in fight or flight mode, even for REAL NOTED super/wo/men, if the challenge is severe enough, per metaphor only, please.

And for those who do have to support themselves, that challenge is not growing easier, in an increasingly machine dominated society.

The old series of movies of the Terminator, in the rise of the machines, has really come true, for at least some folks, in REAL LIFE NOW.

Just call me the second Terminator, in T2, come back to help. ;)

And yes, in some ways I am like Arnold, the actor, not the governor. :)

I think its easy to say 'its human nature' that aside though even if it is entirely human nature and not at all a social construct, humans are living creatures which means we can evolve right? which means human nature can change....Though I don't buy that having different classes of people is human nature, the clique thing I can see as we are pack animals however not sure there is anything within human nature that says 'different 'cliques' cannot co-exist, however when they are based upon income levels that becomes problematic as than humans who have 'more' think they are better than people who haven't reached that point. I don't know maybe it will never happen but I am into any ideas that would reduce/eliminate class division.

As for being productive well if someone had the means of a comfortable living do they really want to sit around all the time and not do anything?....I'd hope they'd be a human go for walks, spend time with friends/family, create art, go camping, go swimming educate themselves on interesting topics. People who wanted to be totally non-productive could but then they'd just miss out on life. Meh this stuff is beyond most humans....maybe this literally is the wrong planet for me.

I don't see as being viable ATM.

It already exist to a limited extent in the gulf state. IMO these are amongst the most amoral, selfish places on earth. Of course they import indentured labour many time the population, who are not citizens.

It is a lot easier if you have a small population, with plenty of resources (particularly energy).

The reality is a breakthrough in energy development would totally change economics as we know it. Especially if their is cheap freely available energy, where people may even be their own producers. This would democratize standard of life.

My prediction is this would be in quantum or fission technologies. How I have no idea if it would happen in my lifetime, if at all. I hope it does happen.