Bye bye Starmer

[ZedLeg]

I think having it in a country as capitalistic as America is never going to be a true reflection tbh. An extra grand month doesn’t go far if you have a medical emergency etc.

[Gavster]

Good point. I genuinely like the idea of UBI as a way to tackle many societal issues in a broad sweep, however I struggle to see a government ever being bold enough to introduce it. Besides, there's simply not enough evidence for any government to act on it yet anyway.

[ZedLeg]

I’m a fan of the principle, it would need a country to overhaul their entire tax and benefit system to do properly though, so it’s unlikely to ever be done on a large scale.

[Broccers]

Going back to my winter fuel payment scrapping I really can't see uproar. Bit odd. Are you waiting for winter?

Plenty of suffering from the party of the people.

Also those who went to private school happy with 20 percent on top.

[ZedLeg]

If there’s something we’re all missing here feel free to post it.

[Broccers]

If there’s something we’re all missing here feel free to post it.

Did you go to private school leftie? No. Those rejoicing that kids are being forced into sub standard education because Labour after they benefitted from it and ultimately success makes me smile.

Only the start. I'll be back. But for now. Tra

[Rich B]

If there’s something we’re all missing here feel free to post it.

Did you go to private school leftie? No. Those rejoicing that kids are being forced into sub standard education because Labour after they benefitted from it and ultimately success makes me smile.

Only the start. I'll be back. But for now. Tra

the vat on private school fees was pretty prominent in their manifesto - i don’t think you could have missed it.

[Mito Man]

Good point. I genuinely like the idea of UBI as a way to tackle many societal issues in a broad sweep, however I struggle to see a government ever being bold enough to introduce it. Besides, there's simply not enough evidence for any government to act on it yet anyway.

Not sure I see it working. If every person gets it, and we are bound by the same laws of supply and demand, all the additional income would eventually be absorbed into the system giving no net benefit.

[Rich B]

the Tax system is daft enough without another allowance to then code out of. if they were to bring in something like UbI, they’d need to heavily simplify the system imo.

[Gavster]

Good point. I genuinely like the idea of UBI as a way to tackle many societal issues in a broad sweep, however I struggle to see a government ever being bold enough to introduce it. Besides, there's simply not enough evidence for any government to act on it yet anyway.

Not sure I see it working. If every person gets it, and we are bound by the same laws of supply and demand, all the additional income would eventually be absorbed into the system giving no net benefit.

I don't quite understand your point. The underlying idea of UBI is about reducing inequalities to ensure everyone has the financial resources to maintain a basic standard of life and provides agency to live appropriately for their own circumstances rather than being reliant on others. Can't see how there's a negative effect in relation to supply/demand though. More people will be able to buy the food they need, ergo demand increases and prices drop?

[Gavster]

the Tax system is daft enough without another allowance to then code out of. if they were to bring in something like UbI, they’d need to heavily simplify the system imo.

My understanding is that's one of the features of UBI; it is universal and not means-tested, which means everyone receives it and it dispenses with a huge section of the welfare state and the attendant bureaucracy that administers it.

[Beany]

Good point. I genuinely like the idea of UBI as a way to tackle many societal issues in a broad sweep, however I struggle to see a government ever being bold enough to introduce it. Besides, there's simply not enough evidence for any government to act on it yet anyway.

Not sure I see it working. If every person gets it, and we are bound by the same laws of supply and demand, all the additional income would eventually be absorbed into the system giving no net benefit.

The net benefit isn't necessarily purely economic, it's quality of life.

As a very basic example, if you're in a job where the management are a bunch of fucking morons (racist, fraud, criminal, whatever), and you can't afford to potentially spend a a bit of time out of work because you've got rent to pay (And you certainly can't afford to go legal with constructive dismissal etc), then UBI potentially means the difference between meaning that you can actually Just Fucking Walk and it not being an absolute assurance that you're going to go into debt, have your credit score completely fucked, possibly end up evicted etc, as it otherwise would be.

UBI doesn't solve all the worlds ills, but it gives those closest to edge options.

[Rich B]

the Tax system is daft enough without another allowance to then code out of. if they were to bring in something like UbI, they’d need to heavily simplify the system imo.

My understanding is that's one of the features of UBI; it is universal and not means-tested, which means everyone receives it and it dispenses with a huge section of the welfare state and the attendant bureaucracy that administers it.

sounds like the tax free allowance, which becomes a right ball ache when you breach the threshold…

[Mito Man]

Good point. I genuinely like the idea of UBI as a way to tackle many societal issues in a broad sweep, however I struggle to see a government ever being bold enough to introduce it. Besides, there's simply not enough evidence for any government to act on it yet anyway.

Not sure I see it working. If every person gets it, and we are bound by the same laws of supply and demand, all the additional income would eventually be absorbed into the system giving no net benefit.

The net benefit isn't necessarily purely economic, it's quality of life.

As a very basic example, if you're in a job where the management are a bunch of fucking morons (racist, fraud, criminal, whatever), and you can't afford to potentially spend a a bit of time out of work because you've got rent to pay (And you certainly can't afford to go legal with constructive dismissal etc), then UBI potentially means the difference between meaning that you can actually Just Fucking Walk and it not being an absolute assurance that you're going to go into debt, have your credit score completely fucked, possibly end up evicted etc, as it otherwise would be.

UBI doesn't solve all the worlds ills, but it gives those closest to edge options.

That would also depend on economics. My point is we are a capitalist society. So everyone has more money, in this case I would imagine rent would increase across the board at a greater rate in this scenario as well as inflation. So said person wouldn’t have the benefits you list, because all their additional capital has been absorbed.
It’s all theoretical, but it’s how it plays out in my mind.

And on the other end of the scale with the people who are living comfortably already will just get a repeat of the stock/crypto/NFT meme craze because that’s what happened last time everyone got given a bunch of money.

[Broccers]

If there’s something we’re all missing here feel free to post it.

Did you go to private school leftie? No. Those rejoicing that kids are being forced into sub standard education because Labour after they benefitted from it and ultimately success makes me smile.

Only the start. I'll be back. But for now. Tra

I didn't vote for the cunts.

[Beany]

If there’s something we’re all missing here feel free to post it.

Did you go to private school leftie? No. Those rejoicing that kids are being forced into sub standard education because Labour after they benefitted from it and ultimately success makes me smile.

Only the start. I'll be back. But for now. Tra

I didn't vote for the cunts.

For posterity.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Good point. I genuinely like the idea of UBI as a way to tackle many societal issues in a broad sweep, however I struggle to see a government ever being bold enough to introduce it. Besides, there's simply not enough evidence for any government to act on it yet anyway.

Not sure I see it working. If every person gets it, and we are bound by the same laws of supply and demand, all the additional income would eventually be absorbed into the system giving no net benefit.

The net benefit isn't necessarily purely economic, it's quality of life.

As a very basic example, if you're in a job where the management are a bunch of fucking morons (racist, fraud, criminal, whatever), and you can't afford to potentially spend a a bit of time out of work because you've got rent to pay (And you certainly can't afford to go legal with constructive dismissal etc), then UBI potentially means the difference between meaning that you can actually Just Fucking Walk and it not being an absolute assurance that you're going to go into debt, have your credit score completely fucked, possibly end up evicted etc, as it otherwise would be.

UBI doesn't solve all the worlds ills, but it gives those closest to edge options.

Surely it just risks inflation? Thereby cancelling out any benefit in the long run.

It hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried AFAIK.

I mean, communism is a great idea in theory until you add humans into the mix

[Gavster]

Not sure I see it working. If every person gets it, and we are bound by the same laws of supply and demand, all the additional income would eventually be absorbed into the system giving no net benefit.

The net benefit isn't necessarily purely economic, it's quality of life.

As a very basic example, if you're in a job where the management are a bunch of fucking morons (racist, fraud, criminal, whatever), and you can't afford to potentially spend a a bit of time out of work because you've got rent to pay (And you certainly can't afford to go legal with constructive dismissal etc), then UBI potentially means the difference between meaning that you can actually Just Fucking Walk and it not being an absolute assurance that you're going to go into debt, have your credit score completely fucked, possibly end up evicted etc, as it otherwise would be.

UBI doesn't solve all the worlds ills, but it gives those closest to edge options.

Surely it just risks inflation? Thereby cancelling out any benefit in the long run.

It hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried AFAIK.

I mean, communism is a great idea in theory until you add humans into the mix

Communism is great, the main issue is that nobody has done it properly yet

Point taken though, the study I mentioned earlier does point towards peoples lives attenuating back to pre-UBI standards after several years of it. Maybe it is one of those ‘better in theory’ ideas. A bit like housing co-operatives, they’re great ideas full of greedy, defenssice and bitter people all fighting for a larger slice of the pie.

[Rich B]

like 4 day weeks. you squeeze the 5 days into 4 for a while, then eventually, you’re just going 4 days of work.

[Beany]

Surely it just risks inflation? Thereby cancelling out any benefit in the long run.

It hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried AFAIK.

I mean, communism is a great idea in theory until you add humans into the mix

Communism is great, the main issue is that nobody has done it properly yet

Point taken though, the study I mentioned earlier does point towards peoples lives attenuating back to pre-UBI standards after several years of it. Maybe it is one of those ‘better in theory’ ideas. A bit like housing co-operatives, they’re great ideas full of greedy, defenssice and bitter people all fighting for a larger slice of the pie.

Genuinely part of the problem, innit - with UBI you'd ideally need to have an economic system more set up to work with it, and other measures to control factors like inflation, and you kinda can't do that without annexing part of an existing country and setting it up to see what works.

It's still interesting though. Oddly, the reports on Altmans UBI project, which I assume you're referring too, that I've seen have generally been less cynical.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/ ... ic_income/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sam-altman ... -research/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... sic-income

This bloomberg piece is basically just rehashed PR, but it does pull up an interesting point, that a lot of the reporting states that people were going to the hospital more and working marginally less (economists call it 'moderately', I guess it's like how 'significant' means different things between us, and a statistician) and framing that as a bad thing.

What it actually means is that people weren't shit scared that going into healthcare (hospital/dental) might end up getting them into medical debt because they couldn't afford to (it's america, remember) and as for working less, as that article points out, one of those people was someone who dropped out of work to provide schooling for their autistic son - because they could afford to. The actual difference on average was 1.4hrs between the paid, and control group.

That's not going back to pre-UBI standards, that's an objectively better standard of living and it's weird to see it framed any other way.

Anyway, Altmans reason for funding this is because he believes AI will take away low paid labour so there needs to be something in place for it, but it's currently coinflip territory as to whether """""AI""""" as they're working with (or more accurately, imagining....) will even be feasible due to copyright issues (And because it's fuuckin' shiiiiite) so maybe they're just wasting their time, eh?