Universal Basic Income via abolishment of all other welfare

I thought this was a good read, a little lengthy but worth an entire read to get the larger picture about why a Universal Basic Income might be preferable to rhe current welfare system, plus it would be 200 billion dollars cheaper. There is a lot in the article about jobs/economy, so I think this is the right forum. Im not sure where I stand on welfare, I'd rather work. But having a severe mental disability, I've never made more than $11,000 in a year at age 34 but have never even bothered to fill out a food stamp form, even when I lived in a tent for 3.5 years. Would this have allowed me to not have gone through that? I dunno... anywho... source:
www.wsj.com...

a reply to: Gyo01

sorry for asking, what is your mental disability?

a reply to: Gyo01

As far as I am concerned, the most natural and desirable system would be abolishment of the welfare system, period. You work for what you want and, if you chose not to work, you either beg or go without. Anything else is basically calling on the middle class and up to choose whether they want to be kicked in the nuts or punched in the face when the "Don't strike me at all!" option is clearly the right choice.

a reply to: Gyo01

So. . . . Communism!

yeah, no.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

I somewhat agree, but what of those who have worked their whole lives and through mismanagement or tragedy their savings are null. Also what about children who's parents have passed too soon?

I was doing a little research on this earlier as it somewhat pertains to my career. When most of the world has moved on to a mostly autonomous process what is there to do with millions of folks without skills to fill the much needed spots. When those spots are filled and there are still millions out just because of the math what are they to do?

Earning your own has been ingrained from an early age but eventually the population WILL outweigh available jobs.

originally posted by: JinMI
Earning your own has been ingrained from an early age but eventually the population WILL outweigh available jobs.

Then the population has grown too populous.

I'm in no way opposed to charities. Hell, I myself have donated of my time and my funds to them. That said, it shouldn't be the government's job and charity MUST always be a voluntary thing. Someone else's misfortune, mishandling of money, addictions, whatever is too blame is only their own problem and the problem of those who feel it is their personal calling to get involved. It is not a societal issue which should be funded via forced redistribution of wealth others have earned.

a reply to: JinMI

Earning your own has been ingrained from an early age but eventually the population WILL outweigh available jobs.

Then we ascend to a single nation, agrarian, global society.

Big changes are coming, how we deal with it is going to be interesting. We can be proactive or re-active.

I can't imagine a politician even whispering ending social security or medicare, that would take bold leadership. Look at the goat screw medical insurance under the ACA is, it was a 1/2 a goat screw before the ACA but now it is crushing people. If our elected "officials" can't handle that I have little faith they can take on this.

Where is the $ going to come from, cutting other government programs? Taxes on automated processes? If we have huge swathes of people getting canned due to robots, taxes revenues will crash. The money has got to come from some where. And with huge companies using tax inversion strategies I wouldn't count on a willing partner there.

There used to be a symbiotic relationship between companies and their employees. Pay them and they then buy stuff with that pay. But it seems the golden goose has been disemboweled using outsourcing, tax inversion schemes and now/later automation. If companies don't want to help pay people to work, are they going to want to help pay them not to?

I have a feeling this whole thing is going to be an ugly affair.

Seasonal

It's a good idea at it's core, much like any social program. Real world shows us that it will just not work. Skimmers, scammers and fraud will destroy it much the same as it has welfare.

If you dismantled welfare right now it would change our economic situation greatly. In it's vacuum....who knows but I don't think it would be pretty.

You guys crack me up. It's an article, from a reputable source, which explains how abolishing all current forms of assistance, including social security (and the numerous Federal and State agencies which oversee these programs), and replacing that with a $13000 grant for each CITIZEN / year, saves us nearly a trillion dollars by 2020. Better still, it is an idea that has support across the political spectrum, from the "libruls," to the libertarians, and the knee-jerk at the old Bigfoot Emporium is "you're crazy!" "what are you smoking?" and "That will never work cos' human nature, trololol!"

Where is the money going to come from, my ass. Read the damn article..

Welfare puts money into the economy. It's not like many welfare people are putting it into savings accounts. They spend it. The bad thing about welfare is that free money has a bad effect on people (and corporations). I agree there should be a base wage but I think people should do work for it. Picking up trash along the highway, fixing the roads, doing works of art, entering data, etc.

I have been thinking about a post to flesh out what people think money is. In it's simplest form it is converted labor be it physical or mental. Money, is not the money, it's the labor. In that sense we could all do something useful for the nation as a whole by "allowing" us all to work. Every bit of the money would be spent on something. Especially if you were not worried about hard times. So businesses would flourish, the people would flourish, government would flourish.

The problem we have is that people think money is some scarce governmental commodity. It's not. In its current form it is a means of control through the scarcity of it. You essentially throttle the labor people could perform. It's also a means of control through debt creation. But, a whole different thread.

I think a base wage is a good idea. As Trump said, Money, we can print as much as we want. That is far far closer to the truth than people realize.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Gyo01

So. . . . Communism!

yeah, no.

It's not Communism at all. It leaves the entire capitalist structure in place, which is that private individuals retain ownership over the means of production.

I'm skeptical of the numbers they're using, I don't see how we could run such a system for less money than we're doing now, but it's not a horrible thing to try, and with the restrictions it has in place it wouldn't be more expensive than what we're doing now.

It accomplishes universal health care, ends homelessness (for anyone that wishes it), covers food, and so on. Oh, and it solves the social security issue at the same time.

a reply to: Aazadan

Name me a single government program that came in under budget and on time.

The costs would necessitate higher taxes, and everyone getting a "living wage" would also require government intervention into every aspect of our lives.

Its okay. I have a horrifying form of schizo symptoms although I don't hallucinate I am delusory beyond belief. my old self tries to bring me back, and sometimes i taste my past self for a second or two then it goes away. It hard to describe, if I could overcome it I would've by now. It started when I was 17 and progressively got worse year after year. The worst part is that it begins instantly... it's just kinda like, damn... 17 years and my life is basically over.

Ps- no sob story, I'm at peace being defunct now! 😃

originally posted by: seasonal
Big changes are coming, how we deal with it is going to be interesting. We can be proactive or re-active.

I can't imagine a politician even whispering ending social security or medicare, that would take bold leadership. Look at the goat screw medical insurance under the ACA is, it was a 1/2 a goat screw before the ACA but now it is crushing people. If our elected "officials" can't handle that I have little faith they can take on this.

Where is the $ going to come from, cutting other government programs? Taxes on automated processes? If we have huge swathes of people getting canned due to robots, taxes revenues will crash. The money has got to come from some where. And with huge companies using tax inversion strategies I wouldn't count on a willing partner there.

There used to be a symbiotic relationship between companies and their employees. Pay them and they then buy stuff with that pay. But it seems the golden goose has been disemboweled using outsourcing, tax inversion schemes and now/later automation. If companies don't want to help pay people to work, are they going to want to help pay them not to?

I have a feeling this whole thing is going to be an ugly affair.

Seasonal

Heh 😉

a reply to: DBCowboy

This particular article is about a specific plan to abolish every form of welfare, and its corresponding Federal or State agency, including social security, and replace it with 13K / yr / citizens over 21 years of age. The writer even says:

First, my big caveat: A UBI will do the good things I claim only if it replaces all other transfer payments and the bureaucracies that oversee them. If the guaranteed income is an add-on to the existing system, it will be as destructive as its critics fear.

We argue over lost manufacturing jobs, and point the finger at the people we know are responsible, but none of that matters. Those jobs are not coming back. What really worries me is that our economy is so fragile, it likely can't withstand another systemic shock. The trouble is: I can see a big one coming.

Our college grads stopped taking womyns studies in 2009. They've moved on and are graduating with business, nursing, criminal justice, finance and accounting degrees. The problem is there are fewer jobs, even in "safe" fields which are hard to outsource for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, in China, 7.6 million students graduated this month, and --thanks to their current economic slowdown -- face a job market in retraction, at home. Meanwhile -- we are graduating about 3.7 million students (175,000 have earned their PhD), and -- though our job situation is slightly better -- it will not absorb nearly 4 million new grads no matter how you slice it. Fact is, the US only creates about 2.5 million "new jobs" each year, and a little more than half of these are low wage jobs that do NOT require a college degree.

Now ask yourself how many of our kids are getting a new or better job this year? What is the competition like for those positions? How many other new grads are they competing with for that entry level tech job with the sheriffs department? Or that opening at Swedish Medical Center for new grads (that wants 5 years experience!). Now, how much fun will that be when millions of educated Chinese grads crash the party. And what if they bring friends? (like the Indians, who have similar problems, as well).

UBI is a way to cut the budget by a trillion dollars by 2020. It won't stop fix everything, but it might stop the bleeding. My prediction? UBI by 2020 or there will be lots of blood, as the system moves to protect itself from a hundred million college grads who were sold a bill of goods, based on a lie that any country ever created enough jobs to meet the needs of a graduating class this size.

It's something to ponder anyway.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Aazadan

Name me a single government program that came in under budget and on time.

The costs would necessitate higher taxes, and everyone getting a "living wage" would also require government intervention into every aspect of our lives.

SNAP and SSI are on time and on budget every time.

Sorry, I had a longer post written but I accidentally closed the window while sourcing information, it's late, and I don't want to rewrite it all.

So lets look at the numbers and evaluate from there. The UBI comes with the precondition of removing the 44% of the US budget set aside for welfare. SS, Medicaid, SNAP, HUD, ACA subsidies, and many others are all removed. This is worth $1.54 trillion in today's money. Now, this plan would give every adult citizen $13,000 but only $6500 if you make over $40,000. There's actually a scale on that, but I don't want to calculate it tonight. 40k puts you in the 78th income percentile and there are 310 million legal citizens in the US. That's 6500*310m*.21 or 423,150,000,000, so $423 billion. Now for the remainder it's 3,183,700,000,000. 3.18 trillion right there. Add them together and this plan would cost 3.6 trillion, minus the 44% we're saving and it would be $1.1 trillion in additional expenses.

A plan like this can work, but the means testing needs to be at about the $25k range, and the 13/6.5 needs to be closer to 11/5.5. Under those numbers you could get it to 2.4 trillion which is only $900 billion more than we're currently spending.

It's a good plan in my opinion, but don't let people fool you, you can't do it without additional revenues, even after all the cuts.

THere's another thread on this already, and as you look deeper into this idea, it does have some merit (despite the initial knee jerk reactions).
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The problem is that what would happen if such a system is put in place is dependent on the people using it.
The culture, the values and ethics that are specific to those peoples.
From what I can tell, that is why you can point to one country that has something like social democracy, and it works, and in others it fails. I don't think it is a coincidence that the ones in which it fails have also failed when trying other systems!


The idea is that, with such a basic income, no one would be able to demand more. That is the end of the line. Like when you give you kids a fixed allowance each week- if they waste it all, too bad.

a reply to: Aazadan

I admire your work, but I think you are off a bit. If your numbers are correct and there are 310 million legal us citizens, about 30% aren't 21 years or older. That drops the number of eligible payee's by 90 million or so.

That paints a slightly better picture, but there is still a hole in the spending, somewhere. Where did the author go wrong in his calculations? Does your 1.54 trillion number cover benefits paid only, or does it cover the operating budgets of the underlying agencies, because they all have to go, as well.

a reply to: Gyo01

A few thoughts on the article.

Friedman was not the first to propose a basic income as stated in the article.

The author is a member of a right wing think tank so this is hardly a call to man the barricades for a communist revolution.

The proposal seems based largely on the idea that robots are going to steal all our jobs. This may be true one day but we are still a long long way from that. Certain jobs are risk from automation but that certainly dosent mean there are not a lot of jobs that require people to do.

Also what about people who have a higher required minimum income, for example people with more severe disabilities. One size does not fit all even at the bottom of the income scale.