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It’s amazing how much damage you can do to society via WhatsApp.
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It is not as clear cut anymore, as when people were farmers and grew food. In other words, just because you are forced to work, does not necessarily mean you really contribute to society, even if you pay taxes. The net result for society may be negative, depending on your employer and motivations.
That's quite right, and I don't think it just depends on the employer. It depends on the kind of job it is, the activity of the company, the field itself, and many complex factors.
I do agree these days that more activities than we think have a net negative result. Many jobs are actually useless or even damaging in the big picture, whereas almost everyone is convinced that by merely having a job, we contribute positively.
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[...] brain melted yet by the sharlatans who promise magic handouts and infinite wealth [...] 
[...] 
Cool story bro. Useful contribution to this thread. When you rely on exaggerations, you prove that even you don't believe you have a good argument.
If you had even a decent argument, you would have at least mentioned the current welfare system instead of some obscure island since UBI is meant as a repair to the current welfare system. You are clearly stuck on stage 1 of the debate: free money = bad. Pretty sure everyone agrees that free money is bad. If your brain weren't so melted, you'd see that and move on to stage 2.
Stage 2 of this debate discusses the current free money system, welfare. UBI creates a gap between entry level workers and non-workers and it should be fairly ineffectual to everyone else. That gap doesn't exist with current welfare system so people currently on welfare have no incentive to get off welfare. With UBI they do have incentive, they get more money if they work. In stage 2, we debate whether welfare or UBI causes more people to refuse to work.
Stage 3 of the debate looks at the cost savings in other areas but you can't even comprehend stage 2 so I won't risk melting your brain with something as complex as healthcare and crime.
I look forward to continuing this conversation. Always wanted to learn more about emojis. Is there an emoji for sarcasm? -
As far as UBI devaluing the currency is concerned. People said a similar thing about he minimum wage, which was supposed to push up prices, negating any pay rises, yet that doesn't seem to have been the case.
Minimum wage affects people that do work, that add value to some product or process, their wage is just higher and can not be circumvented by subcontracting. (Operations that lead to a net negative effect of the economy sooner or later crash, depending on lobby and public image).Automation will keep increasing the efficiency of production, and will result in few people accumulating more wealth with increasingly less need to distribute it again, by having employees. The goal of any company (in our current economy) is to reduce costs, including labor cost as much as possible. That in itself is a major problem, that the UBI tries to address.
Another way of looking at this is that products that are produced automatically are valued lower, and even a fully automatic plant needs customers to sell their stuff to. And this is how these questions are handled already, e.g. injection molded parts are usually not valued much higher than the material is worth (unless a company has an exceptional image... or does things no one else can), so basically the commodity prices are what drives this. I don't see why this would not transfer to other automated branches of any economy - there is competition after all.
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What is a good about Covid 19 related?
The antivaxers are keeping awfully quiet. -
Does anyone think UBI should pay well enough to build hobby projects and do home renos?
Not sure what kind of home renos you are planning but mine cost way more than welfare pays and I do low cost renos, DIY almost everything and use low cost materials. And I screw things up and need redos much less often than I expected
Maybe you are one of the enlightened few that knows how to be happy with less. A lot of people I know buy the biggest house and the most expensive vehicle the bank will allow. I think they are the majority, based on the large portion of people who are claiming to be in big trouble right now. They are not going to just quit and sit on UBI, if they would, they'd already be stuck on welfare.
Well how much are we talking here? My mortgage payment currently consumes about 60% of my after-tax income and I live quite comfortably. I'm less than 5 years from having my house paid off and I have zero debt beyond my mortgage. With the house paid off I'll suddenly have vastly more disposable income if I can keep earning the same wages, I'm not even sure what I'd spend it on. I prefer old cars and have always paid cash and fixed them up myself and I have no plans or desire to ever change that habit. I'm my own mechanic, carpenter, plumber, electrician, landscaper and handyman. My hobbies are not terribly expensive, maybe a couple hundred bucks a month, more if I decide to buy a new toy/tool. The two renovations I've done so far were bathrooms that I stripped down to studs and completely redid did and I spent about $1500 on each of those. I've always been content to live within my means and a bit of discipline has allowed me to live well on a modest salary, compared to friends who have consistently earned closed to double yet seem perpetually broke. Even now I'm far more limited by available time than by funds and if I didn't have to work I'd have a great deal more time. While I'd obviously like to earn more, once the house is paid off I could live more comfortably on minimum wage than most will manage while earning much more simply because most people have the ongoing expense of rent and mortgage/car payment/credit card bills which I don't have.
If I had a choice between keep working or retire and earn the current minimum wage doing nothing I would choose the latter, assuming we had national healthcare because health insurance is my next biggest expense beyond my mortgage if I had to pay out of pocket. The bigger issue though is young people who never got into a career in the first place. Given my direct experience with my friend's lazy stepson and his almost equally lazy friends along with a few family members and other people I know I feel confident in saying there are many thousands of people who have few aspirations in life that involve leaving the sofa. I don't really "get it" but quite a few people seem fully content to coast along through life doing the minimum possible to get by. -
Has anyone ever spotted someone on Star Trek cleaning the toilets? Empty the trash? Or working the garden on a cold, rainy day?
Now that you mention it, I don't recall ever seeing a toilet on Star Trek. Maybe people in the future don't have to pee anymore.
I've also noticed that CRT displays apparently make a huge comeback in a few hundred years.
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We’re better as a species if we have to fight a bit. It gives us value and fulfils our instincts.
People tend to value what they have to work for, and don't value what was gifted to them. There are edge cases of course, but anyone who has raised children has seen this behavior first-hand. It seems to be an inate characteristic of humans. Not sure how that would play out if suddenly everyone got $1K/month just for existing.
And I'm still concerned about the fiscal impact of any two people being able to create a $12K/year obligation for taxpayers on a whim, by accident, etc. If you *stole* $12K from the government you'd be arrested, tried, and likely be forced to pay restitution AND a fine AND possibly some jail/prison time. Yet UBI enables people to create an ongoing government expense. That's a systemic imbalance, and imbalances tend to resolve poorly. -
There is always another side of a coin, and wondering what might be a good about Covid 19 outcome.
What do you think?
Ah well!
1: Liberal globalism crashing down.
2: EU most likely to crash as well and dissolve thats very good.
3: Housing bubble crashing.
4: Paper gold silver market crashing
5: Stock market crashing, thats not to good but lots of oligarcs is about to going down.
6: China globalism is crashing, no one want s to trade with China.
7: DEM in USA crashing pulling socialist commies with them.
8: 2 trillion USD bank bail out again, good if your a bankster.
9: Toilet paper up!
10: Tin can manufacturers up.
11: Food stores making a fortune on peoples fear mongering other people into panic buying stuff they dont need in mass amounts.
12: Centimeter manufacturers up due to social distancing laws!
13: Anti vaccine movement growing rapidly due to NWO Bill Gates trying to make vaccing compulsory
for entire planet (recent interview) while him proposing his medic companies to deliver the vaccine!
14: Nothing good will come out of Corona/Covid19 since the real agenda hiding behind is a financial heist! -
A great example what free handouts do to a Society is the Pacific Island of Nauru. Read it up - it is not like we had actual case studies of this Idea before.
The American Indians are an example of this that is much closer to home for me. There's a lot of sad history behind it but the ultimate effect is they have been receiving handouts for a very long time now and the result is readily observable. I don't have to drive far to get to one of several reservations and you can immediately see the difference, a stark transition between middle class suburbia and ghetto. Dumpy houses, shacks, trailers, in various states of decay. Beat up cars, yards overgrown in weeds and piles of junk. When a person doesn't work for the things they have, those things lack value and get neglected. They have huge problems with drug and alcohol abuse, when one doesn't have to get up for work the next morning every day becomes a Friday night and bored aimless people have little better to do than get drunk or high when when done to excess lead a person to be more aimless, unmotivated and unemployable. No need to take my word for it though, you can see plenty online, explore on Google Earth or even visit yourself.
If you want another example, find the wealthiest people you know and then look at their kids. I had a friend in gradeschool whose parents were rich, they lived in an enormous house, his dad was a lawyer and drove a fancy Jaguar with a phone in it, they were the only people I knew who had a bigscreen TV back in the 80s, my friend had all the cool toys and it was always great fun to hang out over there but eventually it became obvious that he was one of the laziest, stupidest people I had ever known. By highschool he was devolving into the stereotypical partying frat boy type who did little other than drink beer and party with his friends. I lost track of what happened to him after that. -
bored aimless people have little better to do than get drunk or high when when done to excess lead a person to be more aimless, unmotivated and unemployable. No need to take my word for it though, you can see plenty online, explore on Google Earth or even visit yourself.
I'm sure you'll be descended upon by those who will claim yours is a "class-ist" attitude that lumps all poor people together. But as you say, the evidence is all around. Every parent has experienced it too. And I fear things like UBI, in addition to all of its other ill-advised effects, would simply exacerbate this unfortunate human trait for another generation. Or more. -
I also love how some people claim that we cannot know or predict whether UBI would "work" because it's never been tried on a large enough scale, or implemented the "correct way", or whatever.
Those are EXACTLY the same excuses used to "explain" why communism and socialism have never worked throughout history. They've just never been done "right", but please please please give this new crowd a chance and they'll show the naysayers how great everything can be! -
Has anyone ever spotted someone on Star Trek cleaning the toilets? Empty the trash? Or working the garden on a cold, rainy day?
Now that you mention it, I don't recall ever seeing a toilet on Star Trek. Maybe people in the future don't have to pee anymore.
I've also noticed that CRT displays apparently make a huge comeback in a few hundred years.
You need to watch more Star Trek if you didn’t notice any toilet references
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I also love how some people claim that we cannot know or predict whether UBI would "work" because it's never been tried on a large enough scale, or implemented the "correct way", or whatever.
They are EXACTLY the opposite people, not the same. The first group want evidence. The second group discounts evidence.
Those are EXACTLY the same excuses used to "explain" why communism and socialism have never worked throughout history. They've just never been done "right", but please please please give this new crowd a chance and they'll show the naysayers how great everything can be!
Its really true that nothing like UBI has ever been tried at scale. The rich who don't bother working are an example of UBI failing, because they tend to lead to destitution over a couple of generations. However, they are too small a niche to draw any conclusions from, and their easy idle lifestyle has generally been a lot more opulent than anything UBI would provide. Everything else I've seen that has similarities to UBI has been time limited in some way, so the people involved always had to plan for how to survive when the cash stopped. That is nothing like a UBI you can rely on till the grave.
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That’s another good point. UBI would likely obsolete pensions. What do you do with accrued entitlement which is currently being used to prop up other investments?
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Hmm... To get back to the original topic, one of the not-so-good things about Covid 19 is that people apparently have too much time on their hands for idle discussions on EEVblog...
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A good thing that comes out of this: people might wash their hands more often, or take care of hygiene and that helps limit the spread of other viruses using the same path as well.
Respiratory viruses such as Covid-19 are typically contracted by inhalation, rather than ingestion. No doubt it's theoretically possible to contract Covid-19 from eating raw bat meat, but the stomach acid destroys the virus so any infection will be from the mouth, which will be minimal compared to someone inhaling dry bad faeces in a farm or market. I'm not a doctor or virologist so can't be sure. It's just my basic understanding of the situation.
Inhaling is how it starts in the worst case, but it can also just come from touching the face (which is why washing hands is important), getting from there to the mucous membranes, there instantly breeding more of the virus and inhaling it deeper. Some virologists assume that people with mild symptoms develop most of it in the throat first, so the body has time to build antiviruses before it even reaches the lung, whereas more intense symptoms might stem from inhaling it directly into the lung. As it is in the respiratory tract you also emit the virus during the whole time the body has not defeated it.QuoteWe don't get Corona viruses here in Europe and North America because we don't have a culture of eating bat meat, but we do get influenza which is hosted by pigs and birds.
A perfectly cooked bat/pig/chicken would not have the problem, it usually is that the same cutlery/dishes/counter is used for raw meat and the final meal, which counters one reason to cook it in the first place.
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They are EXACTLY the opposite people, not the same. The first group want evidence. The second group discounts evidence.
Nope, it's the same situation, just different scales. UBI has been tried in small scales, everything from Candidate Yang's personally funded experiment to local jurisdictions in the USA and abroad. Communism and socialism have also been tried, repeatedly, all the way up to the nation-state level. Both provide "evidence" (I would have said "data").
When you say "nothing like UBI has ever been tried at scale", that is a perfect example of what I described: "We've never done it properly [as defined by the speaker] so we don't/can't know if it works." The fact that communism and socialism have been tried (and failed) at the scale of entire nations, while UBI hasn't exceeded the scale of local jurisdictions, is just that - a difference in scale, period. All such experiments have yielded data/"evidence". -
A badly executed UBI was tried in Finland under 2017-2018 it was cornered by numerous bad flawed decisions and ended as such!
https://www.businessinsider.com/finland-basic-income-experiment-reasons-for-failure-2019-12?r=US&IR=T
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-welfare-news/heikki-hiilamo-disappointing-results-from-the-finnish-basic-income-experiment -
A good thing that comes out of this: people might wash their hands more often, or take care of hygiene and that helps limit the spread of other viruses using the same path as well.
Yes, that's true. It's also possible to pick up the virus from surfaces too.Respiratory viruses such as Covid-19 are typically contracted by inhalation, rather than ingestion. No doubt it's theoretically possible to contract Covid-19 from eating raw bat meat, but the stomach acid destroys the virus so any infection will be from the mouth, which will be minimal compared to someone inhaling dry bad faeces in a farm or market. I'm not a doctor or virologist so can't be sure. It's just my basic understanding of the situation.
Inhaling is how it starts in the worst case, but it can also just come from touching the face (which is why washing hands is important), getting from there to the mucous membranes, there instantly breeding more of the virus and inhaling it deeper. Some virologists assume that people with mild symptoms develop most of it in the throat first, so the body has time to build antiviruses before it even reaches the lung, whereas more intense symptoms might stem from inhaling it directly into the lung. As it is in the respiratory tract you also emit the virus during the whole time the body has not defeated it.Quote
I suppose there are plenty of ways Covid-19 could have been contracted: where the animal was farmed, slaughtered, butchered, prepared for cooking or eaten raw. There would have been plenty of opportunities for it to get into the eyes, mouth, nose of lungs. No one will know. It's too early to say which vector is most likely in Covid-19, because it's a new virus.QuoteWe don't get Corona viruses here in Europe and North America because we don't have a culture of eating bat meat, but we do get influenza which is hosted by pigs and birds.
A perfectly cooked bat/pig/chicken would not have the problem, it usually is that the same cutlery/dishes/counter is used for raw meat and the final meal, which counters one reason to cook it in the first place. -
Does anyone think UBI should pay well enough to build hobby projects and do home renos?
Not sure what kind of home renos you are planning but mine cost way more than welfare pays and I do low cost renos, DIY almost everything and use low cost materials. And I screw things up and need redos much less often than I expected
Maybe you are one of the enlightened few that knows how to be happy with less. A lot of people I know buy the biggest house and the most expensive vehicle the bank will allow. I think they are the majority, based on the large portion of people who are claiming to be in big trouble right now. They are not going to just quit and sit on UBI, if they would, they'd already be stuck on welfare.
Well how much are we talking here? My mortgage payment currently consumes about 60% of my after-tax income and I live quite comfortably. I'm less than 5 years from having my house paid off and I have zero debt beyond my mortgage. With the house paid off I'll suddenly have vastly more disposable income if I can keep earning the same wages, I'm not even sure what I'd spend it on. I prefer old cars and have always paid cash and fixed them up myself and I have no plans or desire to ever change that habit. I'm my own mechanic, carpenter, plumber, electrician, landscaper and handyman. My hobbies are not terribly expensive, maybe a couple hundred bucks a month, more if I decide to buy a new toy/tool. The two renovations I've done so far were bathrooms that I stripped down to studs and completely redid did and I spent about $1500 on each of those. I've always been content to live within my means and a bit of discipline has allowed me to live well on a modest salary, compared to friends who have consistently earned closed to double yet seem perpetually broke. Even now I'm far more limited by available time than by funds and if I didn't have to work I'd have a great deal more time. While I'd obviously like to earn more, once the house is paid off I could live more comfortably on minimum wage than most will manage while earning much more simply because most people have the ongoing expense of rent and mortgage/car payment/credit card bills which I don't have.
If I had a choice between keep working or retire and earn the current minimum wage doing nothing I would choose the latter, assuming we had national healthcare because health insurance is my next biggest expense beyond my mortgage if I had to pay out of pocket. The bigger issue though is young people who never got into a career in the first place. Given my direct experience with my friend's lazy stepson and his almost equally lazy friends along with a few family members and other people I know I feel confident in saying there are many thousands of people who have few aspirations in life that involve leaving the sofa. I don't really "get it" but quite a few people seem fully content to coast along through life doing the minimum possible to get by.
Good for you. If only more people were smart like that and would resist the urge to extend their debt as far as possible, we'd be in better shape now.
I haven't tried bathroom reno yet. Did the kitchen, floors, yard, etc. Ton of work but I enjoyed it more than my paying job. My wife and I have been wanting to get another house so I have more renos to do for a couple years but have been waiting for housing bubble to 'correct'. I'm glad we waited, I think we will get a much better deal soon. -
You must have a very very very low bar for the term experiment. They don't pass the most superficial assessment of methods. At a minimum they would need to be a guaranteed payment for life to have any value. What has been done might throw up some interesting unexpected patterns of behaviour for further analysis, but they don't allow any conclusions, even of the most tenuous kind, to be formed. The only fairly solid thing we have is to look at the idle rich. People read into that what they like. Some people saying there have always been idle rich, and they've been fine. Others point out that wealth seldom lasts more than 3 or 4 generations, because an idler gets control of the wealth and blows the whole estate. The latter looks like a fuller analysis. When its happening in the odd rich family here and there its no big deal. If it happened on a mass scale it would lead to societal collapse. As I said earlier, the problem with the idle rich model is these people have lots of resources, while UBI would only provide minimal resources. This might make a profound difference to the outcome.Anything that is not evidence based is BS.
Not BS: The UBI experiments to date actually happened (unless you're trying to deny they occurred, in which case we're having the wrong sort of discussion).
Not BS: Those UBI experiments HAVE yielded "evidence".
Not BS: They are documented to greater or lesser degrees, so their data ("evidence") is accessible.
There's no BS here. Just your opinion on whether the available evidence is sufficient to reach a conclusion. Your interpretation is it is insufficient to prove the (non)viability of UBI. I'm not disagreeing, simply pointing out the parallel with how the advocates of communism and socialism interpret previous attempts with those systems too.
A valid question is whether such advocates would ever be satisfied that their chosen systems have been proven nonviable. I suspect not. -
We have too much COVID on this forum, and people couldn't control themselves. Tread locked.