Universal basic income - does it work?

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Eventually, you run out of other people’s money. A very bad idea.
 
I don’t want to work anymore. I want free money. Life is hard and all I want to do is sleep and eat.
 
It took monetary and behavioral scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and others with “advanced” education to realize that it takes only the doling out of free money to cultivate a dependent class of humans? Not only that, the action of government elites ultimately dehumanizes the recipients, violating their intrinsic human dignity by suppressing their usefulness as productive members of society while maneuvering them into the perilous position of surviving on the “government heroin” of free money.

Stand on a corner handing out money and each day the line is longer. Common sense is dead! Long live common sense!

Had this occurred in 1930s Germany or Soviet Russia, it would have been condemned.
 
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Since I think that this is triggered by a post of mine my suggestion was not entirely no strings attached.

There may be none attached with receiving it, but I was suggesting restrictions on how it could be spent.
Cruciferi said:
Life is hard and all I want to do is sleep and eat.
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My assumption is that most people want more than that i.e. go out, eat out, go on vacation etc. Admittedly if most are like you it wouldn’t work.
 
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Time for a Snack and a Nap 😴
 
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Cruciferi said:
I don’t want to work anymore. I want free money. Life is hard and all I want to do is sleep and eat.
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Through social security and medicare we give money and healthcare to people who are too lazy to work all the time.
 
Elf01 said:
There may be none attached with receiving it, but I was suggesting restrictions on how it could be spent.

My assumption is that most people want more than that i.e. go out, eat out, go on vacation etc. Admittedly if most are like you it wouldn’t work.
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I don’t recall who triggered this, just thought it was worth exploring further as it’s own topic.

How do you propose to better control how people spend their allowance, better than our current aid programs? The free market reigns, people will trade what they have of value to someone else in order to obtain what they really want. Just look at SNAP to see how some work the system to turn their credit into cash.

I provided links to several real world test cases on how people respond to a universal income. More than a few seemed less motivated to work. We’ve got real world data on how people actually respond.
 
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Far better, in my opinion, to stay home and eat cake 🍰😋
 
Theo520 said:
How do you propose to better control how people spend their allowance, better than our current aid programs?
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The income does not need to be in cash. It could be dropping food off at houses. If everyone is getting the same then you’re not going to have anything worth trading. My post also suggested some kind of card. That could act like a ration book to record what has been bought and how much is allowed. I think once initial development was done that would require less work, but would be difficult (but not impossible) to develop.

Also I think my post was referring to an ideal world in which people are willing to work.
Cruciferi said:
Far better, in my opinion, to stay home and eat cake 🍰😋
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Cake would not be an item allowed to be purchased under my proposed basic income scheme.
 
A lot of stuff worked in Scandinavia, at least until recently. I doubt it would be successful where I live even if it does work there. If someone is guaranteed free money, there goes their motive to find gainful employment.

It would also make the people vulnerable: whatever the government gives can be taken away or used for coercion. Due to the influence of big business I can see a situation where people receiving mandatory minimum wage wind up living in the dirtiest, most crime-ridden areas. It’s kind of like what we have now, except they’d be coerced into accepting things like abortion on demand, taxpayer funding of gender reassignment surgery, sharia law, et all. To be fair, there are many factors affecting the costs of living and the societal strata. I only mentioned them because they’d have more power than in Finland if it were tried here.

Someone mentioned this in another thread. I’m still reading about it.

 
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Elf01 said:
The income does not need to be in cash. It could be dropping food off at houses. If everyone is getting the same then you’re not going to have anything worth trading. My post also suggested some kind of card. That could act like a ration book to record what has been bought and how much is allowed. I think once initial development was done that would require less work, but would be difficult (but not impossible) to develop.

Also I think my post was referring to an ideal world in which people are willing to work.
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I think we’ve tried all that with our current food aid programs, and for various reason’s ended up with the SNAP card with restrictions on usage. People still find a way around the restrictions.

It is a pity that so many of us fail to conform to ‘ideal behavior’, but that is the real world and the people in the lowest economic class are the least likely to conform to ideal behavior standards. I expect that if they did, they wouldn’t be in that economic class to begin with.
 
Theo520 said:
I expect that if they did, they wouldn’t be in that economic class to begin with.
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Well, my former coworkers could get a better job than fast food. However, they’d have to pass a drug test and actually perform their duties… Assuming, the person is mentally and physically fit, it’s their choice to stay in that rut.
 
“There is a problem with young people lacking secondary education, and reports of those guys not seeking work,” said Heikki Hiilamo, a professor of social policy at the University of Helsinki. “There is a fear that with basic income they would just stay at home and play computer games.”

YA THINK??? rolleyes Some things are so obvious that it takes an advanced degree to not know them.
 
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Wouldn’t a negative income tax be a more palatable solution especially since you get to consolidate and simplify the benefits system?

With that said, I think one should be leery about having UBI or NIT replace the entire welfare paradigm, there is still a need for services to address specific needs (i.e chronic health conditions, disabilities, domestic violence, mental illness, workforce readiness, etc).
 
God Bless America…it may not have worked in Finland, but I look forward to my entitlement check on the first of every month, and figure I deserve every cent of it…sometimes I think I deserve more…but no need to be greedy, I guess.
 
RCIAGraduate said:
Wouldn’t a negative income tax be a more palatable solution especially since you get to consolidate and simplify the benefits system?
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But don’t we give non cash aid because it’s been shown that cash doesn’t work?
 
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