Society/Culture A basic income for citizens.

[Todman]

Giving everyone a basic income would be inflationary, rises in prices and government services mean then the basic wage would have to rise again or the government would get unpopular real fast.

What happened with the schoolkids bonus, remember that one. The end result was that all government schools slapped a levy on every pupil for approximately the amount of the bonus. Schools knew that the parents were good for the money so they slapped on a fee.

 

[Todman]

Think of the proverb

" A fool and money are soon parted ".

It doesn't matter how much money you give the fool at the end of the day he won't have any left.

 

[Sydney Bloods]

Automation means that the jobs you don't want to do, the jobs you can't fill and no immigrant is desperate enough to do them get replaced by machines.

Learn to serve coffee if you want a job for life.

then again: http://qz.com/134661/briggo-coffee-...ould-mean-the-end-of-starbucks-as-we-know-it/

Automated means Automated, doesn't matter if someone wants to do the job or not, If a machine can do it just as well as a person for less money a machine will end up doing the job. buisness is about making money, If a machine will save you money its a no brainer, because if you don't someone else will.

Now personally i don't see the mass automation occurring any time soon, there's been plenty of false dawns about the age of automation before, I expect a push back against major automation breakthroughs that occur in a short period of time. Because our current revenue systems and political structures are ill equipped to deal with it.

hence this ill thought out idea of a basic income, all that will happen is that businesses will up their prices and absorb the entire thing forcing more people back into workplace.

If you were serious about dealing with mass automation putting people out of work, you should be looking at making housing, electricity and public transport free and establishing someway to make a reasonable shopping list free, this way there is no need for a base income in order for a person to have lifes essentials.

i see a base income as something that's inevitably going to be adopted, But this is because people refuse to change the system the result is going to be a cluster**** as prices will keep increasing, so the base income will keep increasing, so then wages will go up in order to attract employees and to pay for them and keep record profits, the prices will keep increasing.

 

[Present Not Past]

Australia already has this
It's called an independent couple with multiple children living in the one housing commission house with both "parents" on the dole/disability/single mother pension.

 

[VineyIsLORD]

Australia already has this
It's called an independent couple with multiple children living in the one housing commission house with both "parents" on the dole/disability/single mother pension.

Its clear someone didnt read the OP

 

[VineyIsLORD]

Automation means that the jobs you don't want to do, the jobs you can't fill and no immigrant is desperate enough to do them get replaced by machines.

Learn to serve coffee if you want a job for life.

This isnt how capitalism works.

Once automation of a job becomes cheaper than using staff, any company wishing to compete will have to automate. The only real way to stop it is by using protectionist policies which are inefficient long term and internationally.

Its why we are seeing such widespread underpayment of foreign workers in Australia.

Once 7-11 started doing it, lots of other retailers had to follow suit.

 

[The Edukator]

With technology advances will come new frontiers that have to be explored by humans. That's new jobs there that can't be automated.

 

[Scotland]

There's always money in the banana stand.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

rah rah capitalism hard work, bludgers.

Thet A current Affair mindset is laughable now and will be even more laughable as capitalism's logical demise starts to accelerate.

 

[Scotland]

We should just tax the rich more.

Every citizen deserves $100,000 a year.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

We should just tax the rich more.

Every citizen deserves $100,000 a year.

rah rah rah.

What happens when China runs out of puff?

 

[Scotland]

rah rah rah.

What happens when China runs out of puff?

Our economy goes to shit with the rest of the world.

Your point?

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Our economy goes to shit with the rest of the world.

Your point?

Capitalism is nearly dead.

 

[Scotland]

Capitalism is nearly dead.

Cool.

So socialism will save us?

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Cool.

So socialism will save us?

We dont really know what a post-capitalist world will look like.

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

Capitalism is fine. Even in the GFC the world-halting 'correction' was the correct reaction of Capitalism.

Regulation is our way of saying we don't want to be victims of Capitalism gone wild. So we try and stop it's harsher angles (as we have done for bloody ages - like with not allowing monopolies and anti-competitive behaviour).

There probably is going to be a time when automation causes problems, but it's a while off yet. Essentially if a small group of people can control the land or factories from which they then generate enormous productivity via automation, it's hard to see how everyone else will find enough work. Services industries and the like do well with people spending money they earn in other industries. If those other industries feature a massive concentration of wealth into few hands globally, then it is easy to imagine we might not have the money floating around between everyone else that would be needed to continue to fuel the non-base-needs industries. In those circumstances maybe this basic income idea has legs, and then the 1% will have even more reasons to complain. But like the Government ID cards that sporadically get mooted, there may well be limits to automation as people worry about what hackers could do if they got access to the automation software. There would be technological answers to that, but if too many people feel their livelihood is being threatened then surely we would simply vote for the party that restricted over-automation... on the grounds of security of course.

 

[Gough]

It would also make the system a bit fairer. The easiest way to become one of these Murdochian non taxpayers is have kids, then you get plenty thrown at you, single people, and couples without kids are largely ignored.

 

[VineyIsLORD]

Capitalism is fine. Even in the GFC the world-halting 'correction' was the correct reaction of Capitalism.

Regulation is our way of saying we don't want to be victims of Capitalism gone wild. So we try and stop it's harsher angles (as we have done for bloody ages - like with not allowing monopolies and anti-competitive behaviour).

There probably is going to be a time when automation causes problems, but it's a while off yet. Essentially if a small group of people can control the land or factories from which they then generate enormous productivity via automation, it's hard to see how everyone else will find enough work. Services industries and the like do well with people spending money they earn in other industries. If those other industries feature a massive concentration of wealth into few hands globally, then it is easy to imagine we might not have the money floating around between everyone else that would be needed to continue to fuel the non-base-needs industries. In those circumstances maybe this basic income idea has legs, and then the 1% will have even more reasons to complain. But like the Government ID cards that sporadically get mooted, there may well be limits to automation as people worry about what hackers could do if they got access to the automation software. There would be technological answers to that, but if too many people feel their livelihood is being threatened then surely we would simply vote for the party that restricted over-automation... on the grounds of security of course.

Except monopolies are the norm. They are a feature of capitalism not a side effect.

Whether you vote for it or not wont matter, once it is cheap enough it will replace workers. Thats our economic system.

 

[Total Power]

We should just tax the rich more.

Every citizen deserves $100,000 a year.

I laughed.

 

[Run n Spread]

It is an absolute certainty to happen over time if we dont want to live in third world standards.

As jobs become more and more automated, there simply will not be enough jobs going around for everyone. And over time the vast majority of jobs will become automated.

Capitalism has no answer to this problem other than "eat shit or starve". This has always been capitalisms response to the unemployed, but as a system it can get away with it while the vast majority are employed. Automation is going to mean well over 50% of the workforce will not have jobs, and a basic income is going to be the key measure to address it. It will be combined with job sharing and a massive reduction in working hours as well as an increase in small creative industries.

Simply brilliantly put. Only point of disagreement is working hours were went to be reducing for the last 50 years yet have gone the opposite way.

 

[Todman]

We should just tax the rich more.

Every citizen deserves $100,000 a year.

Then we decide that people on $100,000 p.a. are rich so they should pay tax, a lot of tax.

 

[MC Bad Genius]

It's actually an incredibly interesting proposition and I can guarantee that every government will be looking keenly at the results of the multiple trials of UBI. The costs of welfare (both the administration of it and the false claims) are a huge taxpayer burden and getting rid of them entirely would be polticially beneficial as well.

My initial mistrust of the idea due to inflation etc has been dealt with in a number of really great articles (which seem to be popping up more and more lately as the idea picks up momentum), but I have to admit that my limited economics knowledge means that I don't truly understand all of their arguments addressing my concerns.

Also, the automation of jobs will come a lot quicker than people expect, especially when you only look at a short period of history. If you take a wider view and account for the exponential development in technology, you'll see that we're only at the foothills of a mountain of AI that will leave a large number of human iobs redundant. I can't remember where it was, but there was a website which predicts in how many years your job would be taken over by technology and some of it was quite astonishing. I'll try to find the link and post it here.

This Wait But Why article on AI is not entirely relevant to UBI, but does a much better job of explaining technological advancement and the way it will take over human jobs. Also, it's a fantastic website (I'd go so far as saying it's my all-time favourite) and I try to get people to get on board with it any chance I can get. Here's the link: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

Simply brilliantly put. Only point of disagreement is working hours were went to be reducing for the last 50 years yet have gone the opposite way.

This. All the domestic work time-savers we've had over the last 75 years were meant to give more leisure time, but actually helped put a whole lot more women into the workforce. It's hard to see that changing.

However, during all the "debt and deficit disaster" BS spouted by the Liberals since 2009, I've been pointing out regularly to people that debt isn't a real issue in the world. It's all there on paper, but the more a country pays back it's debt, the more debt it is allowed to take on. Intellectually the world has shown it is perfectly happy to run off salaries, rather than running off profits. Tech companies like Amazon take pride in their approach to never make money as they build their business and lots of people are very wealthy off the back of that.

It really isn't that much of a stretch to imagine a world where everyone is just giving a base salary with which they can live their life quite well and still have economies tick over pretty as they do now. People will always want to create new things, and don't believe people who think that every idea has been had before (we will keep developing and of course people are yet to leave our current planet in a permanent way). So long as we can keep creating things that people will pay for, then in theory all those debts will keep getting paid and the overall debt level will keep rising and consequently we should be able to 'afford' a basic income for all because the lives been led IRL should outweigh the theoretical worries about how it is being paid for.

And for those who think the debts will eventually be 'called in', then you are ignoring the reality of what would happen. China owns a lot of the world's debt. If they tried to call it all in at once then people would just default, there would be a war and debts one way or another would end up being written off. The grand result of all this would definitely not have anything to do with getting their money's worth. They simply wouldn't. Also, government bonds are sold on the basis of them getting paid off by a certain time, so you can't just suddenly call them in. Instead the practice would be that people would stop buying the new government bonds, because they would think they weren't worth anything. This would also suddenly devalue the worth of that economy hugely and so having those other debts paid becomes far less likely. Once again, they aren't getting their money's worth. At the end of the day, it's in everyone's interests to keep the whole machine ticking.

 

[Taylor]

I think this is being considered because it will be sold to people below a line as being more money in their pocket up front and sold to the accountants as a means of reducing costs.

I say reducing because I think they will say the amount will be:
Total amount spent on welfare + family tax benefits etc / the amount of adults = $standard amount.

Now the way our system works is that anyone on a bit of cash can't be seen to get a better deal than a "battler" so the $standard amount will be indexed when you earn above a certain amount allowing the overall reduction.

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

I think this is being considered because it will be sold to people below a line as being more money in their pocket up front and sold to the accountants as a means of reducing costs.

I say reducing because I think they will say the amount will be:
Total amount spent on welfare + family tax benefits etc / the amount of adults = $standard amount.

Now the way our system works is that anyone on a bit of cash can't be seen to get a better deal than a "battler" so the $standard amount will be indexed when you earn above a certain amount allowing the overall reduction.

I thought the "universal" bit meant that everyone receives it, which is how it is a vote-winning policy with all the rich people who complain about welfare. Obviously in our current economic model it makes sense to have asset-testing, but if it's just about cutting down on bureacracy so you have a 'universal' amount and it is still only available to some people, then I think you hit the obvious qualms. Some people who are, say, highly disabled, may need more $ for help, and someone who is just a student living in a wealthy home trying to find a job gets more money than they need. And if you have a bunch of checks over who is getting it and whether it is justified then you aren't moving that far from the current model.

The other thing people may not have noted is that Switzerland is a very expensive place to live, so the seemingly high level of the proposal isn't as generous as it appears. But it's enough to get by while still having a small amount to spend (or save for a larger spend) and therefore everyone would be taking part in the free market and shaping the economy.

The idea behind it that there would be a greater reward for work (as there would be no rules that reduced your basic income if you did) is fine, but the overall incentive to work would be reduced as you could get by even if you struggled to find new work after quitting one sunny Thursday. That's why it would seem to be an idea relevant to an economy which is struggling to find enough truly productive work for its population. People will always work, as it helps define people's lives, gives them meaning, they don't sit on their arse all day (you hope) and time ticks by in between social catch-ups. But a UBI would mean you could work for winter and party/holiday in summer and those that work in summer would therefore be paid more and you'd get a new shape and balance to the economy. Deciding when you will care for your child and when you will outsource the job will be a different equation. I also like the benefit which says that toilet-cleaning would suddenly be well-paid as at the moment it is something done by the uneducated, and consequently the pay is low.