Catholic social teaching supports basic income’s aim

[KMC]

so when someone doesn’t have a job for 6 months whats the solution?

This is actually an interesting question to ponder, because for each and every person the answer should be different.

One has to ask “Why doesn’t someone have a job for 6 months?”

For my 58 year old brother-in-law, its because his communication skills are horrendous. He has an MBA, but can’t get to any point within 10 minutes…perhaps he should first join Toastmasters and learn better speaking skills.

For other, perhaps there are jobs in Texas, but they like the weather in California and don’t want to move? Solution: Move

Perhaps some lost a $70K job, but the only openings are for $50K jobs? Solution: take what’s available.

I get sometimes people need a little help, and I can see temporary safety nets having a place, but institutionalizing “pay for no work” for an able bodied person who can work, or move, or make less, is problematic.

 

[JimG]

UBI sounds nice, but I wonder if it would simply increase the number of people who choose not to work at all or to not look for work. I already know some people who are perfectly happy to live on their parents’ social security income. Giving them UBI would make them even happier. But who is going to accomplish the work that is needed? Are we all just going to retire?

As for minimum wage, if $15/hr is good, wouldn’t $50/hr be even better?

 

[Anrakyr]

Move in with family who care about you.

Not always an option.

This is actually an interesting question to ponder because for each and every person the answer should be different.

This is very true.

For other, perhaps there are jobs in Texas, but they like the weather in California and don’t want to move? Solution: Move

Someone may not have the money or they have obligations where they can’t say for instance a mortgage.

Perhaps some lost a $70K job, but the only openings are for $50K jobs? Solution: take what’s available.

That’s the ideal but best case I suppose but often someone is making just slightly above minimum wage dropping to min would set them on the path of being homeless. I know because of Its been close more than one.

I get sometimes people need a little help, and I can see temporary safety nets having a place, but institutionalizing “pay for no work” for an able-bodied person who can work, or move, or make less, is problematic.

It’s about creating a safety net that doesn’t trap the person it is supposed to be saving.
Too often I see people trapped in welfare programs where the only way out is the nigh impossible.

UBI sounds nice, but I wonder if it would simply increase the number of people who choose not to work at all or to not look for work.

Arguing how much UBI is fair aside for a moment you make it sound like UBI is meant to give you a middle-class life no questions asked. I personally would argue against that.

Now assume for a second it did, everyone gets more than enough to live and never work again. How long do you think before people get bored and listless without meaning? People go to work to find a purpose because they enjoy what they do. We find love at work and earn our social status.

You take any so-called welfare bum and offer him a job he’s qualified for after say five years of tiny welfare cheques they’ll take it. Welfare or programs like it (and this includes UBI) while may take care of you doesn’t give you options to save or grow in itself. Fixed income is hell given enough time and even the laziest of us has some ambitions.

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

No actually, communism is where the average worker works in a sweat shop for very little. The worker takes what he or she is given, and they try to survive. If the worker complains, he or she winds up in prison where they could starve to death.

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

They have no solution. That is the solution.

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

An anecdote doesn’t disprove the measurement of the economy in aggregate.

My paycheck is a reality check. Numbers quoted my bean-counters are just that, numbers.

 

[Felicia1]

Does it mean the poor are getting poorer or that the rich are getting richer or some of both?

Both.

But here’s the problem—how do you fix it, seeing that there are many different reasons for seeking employment, everybody has different needs, and some people don’t even seek employment at all, but choose to work for themselves, by farming or hiring themselves out for odd jobs, or making things to sell?

Raise taxes on the wealthy and distribute that money to the poor. Universal healthcare would be first, social housing second, jobs guarantee and then many other programs to support the poor.

And what about people who don’t have skills that are worth $15 an hour or more? You’ve just removed all of them from the labor pool and incentivized more automation menial tasks.

Automation is wonderful! The same amount of productivity for much less work. This isn’t a problem, it’s the solution. Everyone gets to work less but if the money goes to everyone instead of freeloading shareholders everyone enjoys the same benefits.

Also, what happens to the employers who legitimately can’t afford to pay out $15/hr?

If you can’t afford to pay your employees a living wage and are instead relying on the government to provide it for them your business wasn’t viable in the first place.

Wages are not now stagnant, and have not been for the last two or three years. Wages are increasing faster than inflation. Granted, for at least 10 years before that it wasn’t so.

More like 40 years. Some minor wage growth after stagnation since the '70s is not an excuse for Catholics to ignore the problem.

What the rich make does not affect what the poor or middle income people make.

This is a laughably false claim.

The top 25% of earners pay 85% of all income taxes so idk what you’re on about here

As long as their share of wealth continues to increase while the poor’s share continues to decrease they aren’t paying high enough taxes.

Giving away free money pays for itself…

Now I’ve heard it all.

Modern Monetary Theory. Learn it, love it.

I’d have to look up the numbers to be exact but even if you seized the wealth of all the top 10% and divided it evenly among the other 90% it breaks out like $150 per person.

That $150 in the hands of the poor is vastly more beneficial to the economy than in the brokerage accounr of some wealthy freeloader.

You know where there is a Universal Basic Income in place? Native American reservations.

That works well, right?

Yeah, it works pretty well.

 

[edwest211]

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs " is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. The principle refers to free access to and distribution of goods, capital and services.

I have relatives in a Communist country. They worked.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Alaska's 'Basic Income' A Study In How To Bamboozle Mark Zuckerberg

 

[Ridgerunner]

Automation is wonderful! The same amount of productivity for much less work. This isn’t a problem, it’s the solution. Everyone gets to work less but if the money goes to everyone instead of freeloading shareholders everyone enjoys the same benefits.

I remember Solzhenitzyn comparing the West to the Soviet Union. He remarkd that the Soviet Union was the place “…where labor is cheap and capital dear, unlike the West where it’s the other way around.”

I would have thought people would remember that distributing and consuming capital was probably the main thing that caused communism to fail. It’s like a farmer eating the seed corn. Capital needs labor. But without capital, labor is worthless.

It may be of interest to know that the respective shares of labor and capital of the GDP has almost not varied at all since 1929 when the government started making records of it. Capital’s share is almost always 1/3, and labor’s is almost always 2/3. Look it up. Labor’s share is slightly higher at full employment, slightly lower in times of high unemployment. That’s not because of greed or anything. It’s because “capital” in the form of productive capacity (machines, etc) becomes less efficient when the labor component uses all of its productive capacity.

You’re free to demonstrate that the rich making money is what causes the poor and middle income people to make less. If you can’t prove it, (and you can’t) you shouldn’t say it.

 

[Felicia1]

This is ridiculous. You accuse the wealthy of directly causing suffering.

It’s Basically Just Immoral To Be Rich

inflation and wage increases are accurately measured in the economy but obviously individual people are not on the mean measurement. An anecdote doesn’t disprove the measurement of the economy in aggregate.

And the aggregate disguises the reality. You can talk about the economy growing in aggregate but if all the benefits flow to the richest 1% that’s not a moral economy.

Of course, if the kid is a white male, I probably am not going to get into trouble, because white males are not a protected class.

I’m pretty sure sex and race are protected classes in most states. Do you live in a state where they aren’t?

Money doesn’t grow on trees, it has to come from somewhere.

If you’re part of the 1% for all intents and purposes money grows on trees for you.

Who in this thread is arguing for people to suffer in poverty?

Every person defending the system as is.

A father of ten needs to find a more substantial job than working at a burger shack.

Only because our economy is incredibly unjust.

What is wrong is the belief that if one person gets rich it must make another person poor. That’s absurd. If I provide a new product that lots of people want and are willing to purchase, I will make a lot of money, but who have I impoverished?

The people producing that product for you that you’re almost certainly underpaying.

No, actually it wouldn’t. It would help some of those who keep their jobs, but it completely ignores the unintended consequences such policies have. It is wishful thinking. It is belief in butterflies and pixie dust.

It’s actually pretty funny that you linked UW’s report about Seattle’s wage hike but but not their followup where they had to admit they were wrong:

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/28/fight-for-15.html

But who is going to accomplish the work that is needed?

If companies are currently paying fair wages for labor provided they have nothing to worry about, people still like luxuries and vacations and cars and boats and whatever else and will work for them. If companies are currently not paying fair wages for labor provided then they will have to raise their rates to attract workers

You’re free to demonstrate that the rich making money is what causes the poor and middle income people to make less. If you can’t prove it, (and you can’t) you shouldn’t say it.

Easy: over those decades where wages stagnated executive salaries increased by orders of magnitude and the share of wealth controlled by the freeloading capital class soared. Where do you think that money came from?

 

[JimG]

The poor you will always have with you. And also, the rich you will always have with you. A society that has very few rich will have a lot more poor.

 

[edwest211]

“Greed is good.” Gordon Gekko

 

[edwest211]

Too simplistic. I watched greed make it impossible to live on one income starting in the 1970s. The Savings and Loan scandal that ran from 1986 to 1995. And the Global Economic Collapse, and Credit Default Swaps, of 2008. Who is in charge?

 

[JimG]

It wasn’t necessarily greed that made it impossible to live on one income. I can recall when it was common for a mortgage loan underwriter not to count a wife’s income because it was not deemed reliable. But women went to work in large numbers, laws prohibited gender based discrimination, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act required mortgage loan underwriters to treat mens and womens income the same. Two income families became the norm, which made it easier to qualify for higher home loans, and real estate prices increased as a result. Many families treated their homes as a source of extra income, converting home equity to cash and debt with continued refinancing, until the bubble peaked.

 

[edwest211]

In the 1960s and 1970s, millionaires is what we heard. Today it’s billionaires and people going for their second billion. As a comedian I don’t like said, “What are you going to do with it? Start your own space program?”

 

[JimG]

I wouldn’t want the trouble of managing a billion. But many billionaires have their own charitable foundations.

 

[edwest211]

That doesn’t matter. Look at guys like Elon Musk. He tells his designers to create a “Blade Runner truck” and they do.

 

[edwest211]

You don’t understand what having a billion dollars means, much less two billion. Mr. Musk is catching flak from Wall Street for his “science fiction” projects. One thing I know about the wealthy is that most of them are incredibly cheap.

 

[KMC]

Quite a length post, but at least its interesting. A few questions:

1. Regarding your reply to me, what system would you change the current one to, or if you keep the current system, what changes would you make?
2. For all intents and purposes, most of the 1% created the trees the that money grows on via hard work, sacrifice and risk. (I’ll concede that there are quite a few that didn’t earn it.) To be more specific, the last time I checked doctors made up the largest portion of the top 1%. Your comment seems to imply that money wasn’t earned, deserved or justified. Thoughts?