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Should There Be A Universal Basic Income?

Debate Information

The debate for a living wage continues and the championship for a Living UBI is needed. Here is an example of one wage idea, A family wage is a wage that is sufficient to raise a family. This contrasts with a living wage, which is generally taken to mean a wage sufficient for a single individual to live on, but not necessarily sufficient to also support a family. As a stronger form of living wage, a family wage is likewise advocated by proponents of social justice. Family wage campaign was aiming to maintain the traditional family structure, as a concept connecting economics and family structure it is one of the examples of how economic structure of family, which is a subject of the field family economics, affects overall economy beyond the family. The low pay UBI would not exactly help families with the quality of life and keep families in poverty. f a worker or family does not earn a family wage, they are likely to delay having children and have a smaller family, both due to delayed childbearing and due to choosing to limit number of children due to expense.
The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line. Depending on how one defines “working” and “poverty.



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    Arguments


  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -  
    UBI violates the principles of fair trade, where every financial transaction has to be attached to something of physical value. Giving people money simply for existing skews the entire market, devalues currency, increases prices and lowers economical growth significantly. UBI must not be a part of the modern, let alone the future, economy.

    The best way to provide people with family wages is to open up the market and lower governmental presence in the economy, so everyone can find an employer not restricted by taxes and wage laws to suit their needs.

    A UBI with the purpose of population growth would be a disaster: fewer people work and those who do work become less productive, yet more people need to be taken care of. It is an economical down-spiral from which there is no way up.
  • WordsMatterWordsMatter 493 Pts   -  
    While it's an interesting concept I see too many unanswered questions to confidently implement it at this point.

    Who decides what the ubi should be/cover? Who's going to run the things accessible to people with ubi? For example who's going to own and operate the housing for people on ubi? There would be massive room for exploitation and terrible living conditions. Who decides what size house or amenities are the base standard to live with?

    I do think a ubi could have a positive impact on a free market in a sense. If you know you can open a store or put your time and effort into developing a new product without having to risk everything you have, more people would be inclined too. Driving more innovation and potentially bringing more competition. I think most on ubi would still want to work if it only covered a house and food so that they would still have to earn luxuries. However at the current time I don't think their are good enough plans to implement such a system that, not creates a class of people who don't work like capitalists and libertarians posit, but instead essentially it would just funnel the ubi into the pockets of those providing the living materials to those on ubi at significantly poor standards.
  • teakteak 12 Pts   -  
    1.  The UBI covers everyone. 2.  Everyone should get $34,000 to $50,000 3. It is financed using Gross National Income. 4. If payed out on a living basis it can help create jobs, and have people put their products to market 5. A: People who won't work don't have too-Libertarian value, it is none of our business if someone is lazy or not. b. Most people have the energy to work and want to contribute on there terms. C. Automation is inevitable, so maybe we can install a Job Guarantee.  6. The UBI has no standards, but give minorities a chance at Economic Justice and Social Justice ending the misery of poverty and welfare slavery.
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -  
    @teak Justice is a horrible concept to begin with, as it manually rewards or punishes people for things outside their control.

    In all these discussions, what you need to think about is who funds the UBI. Money does not come out of thin air, someone has to do some labor in order to produce the value that then can be converted into money. If I work, and someone does not, then I end up funding their income - and if I refuse, then I go to jail for tax dodging. It does not take too much mental effort to understand why I do not want to live in such an economy.

    Once again, in a real economy money is always tied down to some real physical value. And if the individual getting the money does not get it in return for producing that value, then that value has to be produced by someone else. Such direct theft is never good for any economy.

    Talking about job creation, ask anyone on the streets: "Would you work if you were getting $50,000 a month?" Most people will honestly tell you: "No". If you think UBI helps create jobs, then you do not understand human psychology. The ideal of the vast majority of people is to have income while doing nothing. And this is exactly what will happen if a sizeable UBI is implemented.

    And then we, the minority that does want to work and would do it no matter our passive income, will end up working for everyone else's benefit. Sorry, but thanks. This is not what makes the economy thrive, and this definitely is not what makes people who work happy.

    Living UBI is an economical suicide.
  • teakteak 12 Pts   -  
    That is $50,000 a year. Money is no longer attached to physical value as it once was. I disagree, the documentary on the Universal Income, people said they would still want to work. I spoke of the Job Guarantee. Once again people should not be punished for not working. If jobs worked no one would be in poverty. You have a 20th Century sense of economy. It is the 21st Century, the rules are much different.
    CYDdharta
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -   edited December 2018
    @teak

    Nobody is punished for not working; this is a free economy, and not working is not illegal. Not getting free donations is not being punished; it is simply not being given gifts.

    Money is always attached to a physical value. The very essence of money is an entity aimed at substituting direct exchange of goods with meta-goods in order to accelerate and streamline the process. Once you disagree with this matter of affairs, money becomes irrelevant - it is just colored paper now, having no inherent value and, hence, unusable for any practical purposes.

    There will always be poverty, no matter the system, by the very definition of the word. If we have a very prosperous society, where the richest person gets $1,000,000,000,000 a month, and the poorest person gets $1,000,000, then the poorest person is still in poverty by that society's standards. What is classified as "poverty" in the modern First World economies is unbelievable luxury by the standards of even a century ago.

    Some people will still want to work with UBI in place, obviously. And it is no coincident that in a documentary advocating for UBI, those people are the ones who are given a platform. But ask anyone a realistic question. Not, "You are earning $50,000 right now, and with UBI you would be earning $100,000 if you keep working. Would you?" But account for how much taxation will need to be raised to obtain such a high UBI, account for how much the employers will drop their wages to compensate for the employees now happy with less, hence skewing the market... And ask, "If you do not work, you will get $50,000 a year. If you do work 40 hours a week, you will get $65,000 a year. Will you work?" Ask yourself this question first and think about it honestly; perhaps you will start understanding the problem. I am not even mentioning the crazy inflation such a high UBI will induce, making those $50,000 equal to a small fraction of it in terms of today's money.

    There is no magical way to create money out of nowhere. To finance UBI, you have to take money away from the private market, hence suppressing that market's activities. This is death for the economy even if people still keep working; if they do not, which is what will likely happen, then the economy will die a few times faster. That is all the difference there is, really.
  • YeshuaBoughtYeshuaBought 669 Pts   -  
  • I support universal basic income.  My reasons for supporting such a possibility is based on the fact the cost of living is somewhere between two and three times the amount the wages earned at a minimum. There are some places in the US where the cost of living is much higher than two or three times. The wealthy and the corporations don't want to raise wages but they don't have a problem with raising the prices on goods and services. 

    And people who own real estate: they too want their pound of flesh and believe they are entitled to get rich at the expense of others. It's ridiculous to see someone trying to rent a run down two bedroom home for $900 a month, when at most, they should be grateful if someone pays them $200 a month for a piece of garbage. The free market advocates say it's supply and demand that drives the prices, but no - if you live in an area where one's annual yearly income is insufficient to pay for a house, the utilities, a car, car and renter's insurance, food, car maintenance,  there should be no supply and demand. You're living in a depressed financial area where there are a lot of minimum wage jobs or no jobs. And you can't tell someone to move to where the better paying jobs are as that's not a fix. House rentals are only going to be even more expensive. 

    So, if universal basic income isn't the answer, what is?  The free market system will take care of everyone? Please! The free market advocates have been saying that for years and it's not doing anything for the middle class and the lower income class. It's taking advantage of them. The only options are to pay realistic wages to employees - based on the real cost of living and be prepared to pay more for what you pay. Provide safety nets which provides the basics: housing, food, medical. Provide a universal basic income in which the money is provided to all citizens to cover their living expenses - the government stays out of it.  Roll back prices  and institute rent and housing control, barring real estate agencies from managing properties. They are another reason why housing prices are so high. And there are people who are on Social Security who do not receive enough in retirement to live on, and some of the states they may live in deny them the additional safety nets they need to live. That should be criminal. Doing nothing, which is what many free market advocates support, is the stupidest idea of all, as that only insures nothing changes.
  • teakteak 12 Pts   -   edited December 2018
    Join us at facebook Living Universal Basic Income http://livinguniversalbasicincome.wordpress.com spread the word. 

    hope you support the $34,000 to $50,000 a year LUBI.
  • CYDdhartaCYDdharta 1823 Pts   -  
    What a horrible idea for a country that can't control it's borders.
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -   edited December 2018
    I have never understood the notion that the responsibility for getting the poor out of poverty lays not on the poor, but on the rich. "Free market does not work, because there are people who are struggling" - this is a very perverse understanding of what the free market is supposed to achieve.
  • OppolzerOppolzer 191 Pts   -  

    I like the tenet of UBI, however, I don’t think it’s contingent to work. Considering that UBI is from the public’s pocket, it’s not feasible given the current typical rates of taxation. Also, it's innate that humans have a sentiment that we shouldn’t get something (money) for nothing (no work). Therefore, UBI would diminish incentives to work. Merely the idea of ‘unearned incomes’ is unreasonable, considering how humans are developed to work. In addition, what about the development of technology? In so far, automaton’s have been shown as competent to perform low-menial work. It seems reasonable since we are merely in the starting development of AI. Therefore, I feel UBI will only work once we’ve achieved full automation. To add onto that, overpopulation would be an issue. We also know that overpopulation corresponds with over-consumption, this is a no-brainer.

    To conclude, the income of UBI would be minimal if it was implemented today. I’m not eliminating UBI as a possibility, and it may work in the future. However, it wouldn’t work now.


  • midoprealmidopreal 21 Pts   -  
    Well considering that the poor and unemployed don't make enough money to contribute to any US good manufacturing except food production it is actually hurting the economy. With this they are at a higher disposition to buy cheap goods from China and other countries outside of the United States that only help companies like Amazon and Walmart. With automation on the rise some people are going to be permanently put out of work. With this companies will put themselves out of business because people have to buy goods. It is circular. Think of it as a tax break but instead of it directly going to the companies, it is going to people who are going to spend it all not hoard all of the money in stock buy backs and in off shore accounts. Also I think that there should be a limit on this that money that is received from this must be spent majority on US goods and is proven through receipts to a certain dollar amount, But that last part may be too hard to regulate so i don't know about that last part.
  • midoprealmidopreal 21 Pts   -  
    Also it would work better than this last tax cut did for the country
    CYDdharta
  • teakteak 12 Pts   -  
    Actually the UBI will change anyone's incentive to work, and if it does it is a free choice for those who do not wish to cater to other people standards.
  • cheesycheesecheesycheese 79 Pts   -  
    teak said:
    Actually the UBI will change anyone's incentive to work, and if it does it is a free choice for those who do not wish to cater to other people standards.
    UBI is designed to be large enough to have a basic living but small enough to create an incenive to work
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -  
    @teak

    You do not work to cater to other people's standards; you work to fund your living. Nobody forces you to work, and you can quit at any point in time. You do not need the UBI to be able to quit your employment and still be well off. You can always work for yourself, open a business, try currency or stock trading, invest in real estate, etc.

    Everything you ask for already exists and is easily available to everyone. You do not need to steal other people's money to be able to avoid employment.
  • UniversalismUniversalism 16 Pts   -  
    Rather than asking whether there should be a universal basic income, I think it is best to ensure a universal standard of living. The idea of a universal basic income solving the issues of poverty is a fallacy similar to those who advocate increasing the minimum wage with the same goal in mind.

    Inflation can alter purchasing power, and purchasing power is what is really required in determining how much someone can and cannot afford with a dollar.

    House prices will always fluctuate, but the house themselves are always going to be there, provided that they are maintained and looked after. 

    A physical house, in reality, has more value than all the money in the stock market could ever provide.

    The only reason we believe houses are expensive, is because we assume that we as a society must spend a million or so dollars to purchase a single house.

    In reality, a house can cost about as little as we want it to.

    Houses are nothing more than a structure made out of bricks, wood, utilities, wiring and windows with a foundation to settle on, along with a few other basic tools that I omitted to mention.

    Many people already spend their free time building houses for the poor.  Former President Jimmy Carter is a high-profile example who comes to mind, as he believes it is his Christian duty to reduce homelessness as much as possible before he himself dies.

    Others who are unemployed at this time or who are working an unsatisfying job would themselves be open to joining such a labour force, provided that we give such workers a certain standard of living that would allow them to meet the needs required for them to live a dignified and stable life.

    Just imagine how much easier this would be if instead of spending that time on houses, we also spent it on building apartments for singles as well as young couples. Apartment units are far easier to create than houses, and a single building could have the potential to house anywhere from several people to several thousand people.

    In addition to saving on space in order to minimise environmental destruction, we can ensure that those units will be around for future generations of people who may themselves need the benefit of housing down the road.

    That is something that money just cannot buy.
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