O/T Universal Basic Income

[Lancasterclaret]

Genuine question Rowls

The only thing worse than living on benefits is if you are one of those people who is working but not having any spare cash at all due to inflation and the cost of living crisis

[CoolClaret]

Genuine question Rowls

The only thing worse than living on benefits is if you are one of those people who is working but not having any spare cash at all due to inflation and the cost of living crisis

Cost of existing crisis * I think is a better term to use

[Boss Hogg]

Not sure if you know this but personal anecdotes really don’t mean anything.

On to benefits/UBI - its hardly enough to finance a life of luxury, like at all is it.

If anything, it will help people if they really want take some pressure off their backs so they can go to school and re learn/level up so they can be employed on something more than minimum wage

Actually it does mean something. It’s a real story and highlights that for some ( not all) living on benefits can be a lifestyle choice. It just doesn’t fit in with your viewpoint.

[Boss Hogg]

I think Lowbankclaret really, really wants you all to know that he paid for his partners daughter to go to college.

I suspect he resents that, but I’m only guessing and could be wrong.

Ridiculous and taken out of context.

[CoolClaret]

Actually it does mean something. It’s a real story and highlights that for some ( not all) living on benefits can be a lifestyle choice. It just doesn’t fit in with your viewpoint.

* sigh*

No, personal anecdotes been f all when deciding upon or setting legislation, which is what the topic of the discussion is about - otherwise you could set policies or whatever based on anomalies

[helmclaret]

I will repeat, my partners daughter who I paid to go through Nelson and Colne college. The tutors got her a place at a top restaurant in Harrogate, living in and a good salary.

She decide to live on benefits and 8 years later still does. No intention of working and nor does her partner.

Why would anyone bother when you can live without working.

Sounds like you spoilt her and are reaping the rewards.

[Foshiznik]

For every one “lazy scrounger who can’t be arsed to work” getting paid under the proposed UBI, there are 5-10 hard working people doing highly skilled and/or stressful jobs that they are only doing to survive rather than thrive. If we can help those people, I can take the former as a negative as the positives far outweigh them.

The only arguments I’ve seen here or elsewhere against UBI are the same arguments that could be set against the current universal credit and other non-means tested benefits, not new issues.

[Taffy on the wing]

Elon Musk called this a while ago that the world will be paid a universal set of money as more and more jobs become automated there will be far to many people unemployed than jobs available.

If i read it correctly that we all get £1600 plus any money we earn I'm bang up for that while it lasts.

My opinion is it will only last until the digital currency comes in then its all out government control on a worldwide scale unfortunately.

The Government want you to think this......they're really after your "precious bodily fluids"

[Rowls]

It isn’t you know. I suspect more than an education is being paid for here.

Not going to comment on the personal issues about paying for college. It’s only that it’s possible to easily live on benefits if you’re dishonest or game the system.

You’d posted that the person in question “can’t have much of a life on benefits”. That’s only true if you follow rules and live honourably.

[Rowls]

You one of these people living it up on benefits Rowls?

No. I'm somebody who worked for the DWP for the best part of a decade. Mainly interviewing members of the public.

Rowls can you please answer me this

Which is a country that has ‘got it right’ for you?

- I’m trying to plot your purported fiscal policies/beliefs along with whatever other crap you churn out into an actual, functioning country

What you're trying to do, as evidenced by your petty abuse, is to try and wind me up or show me up.

But to answer your question sensible, in a manner your tone does not deserve, most western countries have broadly "got it right" from most perspectives. That's not to say they don't have problems or couldn't easily regress if they follow bad ideas or policies.

If you want to see how quickly bad ideas and bad policies can reverse our prosperity and security I can give you a few examples.

Take a look at San Francisco to see how the easy proliferation of drugs and a vacuum of law and order can reduce one of the wealthiest towns in the world into a drug ghetto in the space of less than a decade.

Take a look at how quickly UK government spending on the furlough scheme and other lockdown measures brought our economy to a grinding halt and gave us double-digit inflation. This is something that was predicted by myself and others. But as late as April 2021, "financial experts" on the other side of the debate were calling people like myself who warned what would happen as "doom-mongers".

https://www.ft.com/content/2402521c-9f2 ... 747634ff74

You might not understand why I'm so passionate about things but it's because I understand some simple truths - it is very, very difficult to build up societies as free and prosperous as we are lucky to enjoy, but it is very easy to take them for granted and ruin them. They take centuries to build but can be destroyed in weeks or days.

[Rowls]

Genuine question Rowls

The only thing worse than living on benefits is if you are one of those people who is working but not having any spare cash at all due to inflation and the cost of living crisis

This actually is not a question, Lancs.

[Rowls]

As you can see guys, I'm up bright and *very* early today. I've got a busy day ahead of myself so don't be downhearted if I don't reply to you.

[Greenmile]

Rowls can you please answer me this

Which is a country that has ‘got it right’ for you?

- I’m trying to plot your purported fiscal policies/beliefs along with whatever other crap you churn out into an actual, functioning country

Germany in the 30s?

[atlantalad]

Literally just crash the fking housing market and legislate to make being a landlord so absolutely awful that nobody wants to do it, and we won't need UBI. It's misidentifying the problem to say people don't have enough money. That's a symptom, not a cause. It's not that — it's that we have a sort of serf class in thrall to a landlord class, and this has knock on effects on the housing market which affect mortgage owners too, so basically everyone is caught up in this shite because we have a situation where people (landlords — individual and large companies) can have other people (tenants) pay for their homes or housing portfolios for them. Just stump up the capital to get a mortgage, bleed your tenants for a few decades, now you have a big housing portfolio that the tenants paid for, not you, and you get a few nice holidays a year out of it. Absolute farce of a system. If you want to apply capitalist principles to frivolous shite people don't truly need, I dunno, coffee, or motorcycles or whatever, go for it, good luck to you, but to do it with housing puts people in a stranglehold. The problems are structural more than they are market economic, so no matter how much the lowest paid earn, their faces will still be ground by a class of people with too much power and political sway. Landlords are already given free money for sitting around on their fat arses doing absolutely nothing, creating absolutely nothing, contributing absolutely nothing to society, just being a drain on other people's existence, whenever a welfare claimant's benefit money (including in-work benefits paid to people who absolutely graft their balls off) goes straight in the landlord's pocket. I bet landlords love it when benefits increase. It's just more money syphoned directly into their bank accounts. We have a situation where literal economic parasites are having the time of their life and there's never any pushback because they have too much power, and unless the underlying structure ends, more money going into people's bank accounts won't change anything. No wage or welfare tinkering solves this problem until this parasitic class all but disappears out of existence.

Oh the irony!

You do realise the majority of Premiership /higher league footballers invest in, or build their own, property portfolios as a ‘pension’, and yet the serfs happily pay out of their meagre wages to watch them kick ( them in the ) balls.

[Lancasterclaret]

So the data we've got about benefits lives being easy are one person talking about a family member and one person talking about a job he had quite a long time ago

Meanwhile, one in three children in 2022 live in poverty in the UK, a G7 nation

Something isn't right with what is being done at the moment, and it need sorting

[martin_p]

Not going to comment on the personal issues about paying for college. It’s only that it’s possible to easily live on benefits if you’re dishonest or game the system.

You’d posted that the person in question “can’t have much of a life on benefits”. That’s only true if you follow rules and live honourably.

Well I’d assumed that the person was honest. It’s possible to live a life of luxury many different ways if you cheat, defraud and break the law. This will always be the case whether we have a benefits system/UBI or not and is a complete red herring.

[Lancasterclaret]

Well I’d assumed that the person was honest. It’s possible to live a life of luxury many different ways if you cheat, defraud and break the law. This will always be the case whether we have a benefits system/UBI or not and is a complete red herring.

That Tory Peer who has done a runner being a case in point

I'm more angry at her and what she has done than Lowbanks relative because of the funds involved

[Caballo]

Can’t have much quality of life on benefits.

Depends on your 'measure'.

[Burnley Ace]

Meanwhile, one in three children in 2022 live in poverty in the UK, a G7 nation

It’s relative poverty, relative to the median which is different from absolute poverty. If you doubled everyone’s income 1 in 3 children would still be living in “poverty”.

[SammyBoy]

I haven’t had time to think about UBI all too deeply and I’m no economist but the first thing that sprang to mind was hypothetically, should we all receive £1600 per month on top of whatever income we have now, won’t the price of everything inevitably go up leaving people in a similar position (relatively speaking) to the one they’re in now?

[Inchy]

How much has humanity cocked up if robots/automation taking over our work has become a problem

[Lancasterclaret]

I haven’t had time to think about UBI all too deeply and I’m no economist but the first thing that sprang to mind was hypothetically, should we all receive £1600 per month on top of whatever income we have now, won’t the price of everything inevitably go up leaving people in a similar position (relatively speaking) to the one they’re in now?

Which is why it has to be extensively trialled I suspect

It might not work, but to dismiss it out of hand just because a lot of very rich people, Rowls and pensioners are against it isn't correct either

[SammyBoy]

Which is why it has to be extensively trialled I suspect

It might not work, but to dismiss it out of hand just because a lot of very rich people, Rowls and pensioners are against it isn't correct either

Yeah, just not sure how you'd gauge the macroeconomic effects of UBI without the universal part of it, this trial is limited to 30 volunteers who are geographically disparate, and protected from any residual effects of mass adoption of UBI - I can't imagine they'll report back anything other than it being brilliant.

[Lancasterclaret]

Yeah, just not sure how you'd gauge the macroeconomic effects of UBI without the universal part of it, this trial is limited to 30 volunteers who are geographically disparate, and protected from any residual effects of mass adoption of UBI - I can't imagine they'll report back anything other than it being brilliant.

Oh of course, but that is then the basis for a larger trial, and by then, other countries will be doing similar so there will be more data

I have to admit, because of the huge income/housing/jobs disparities we have in this country, I don't know if it would be possible here

[ClaretTony]

Thread locked unfortunately, just too much action needed due to personal abuse.