The Utopia Mirage: Universal Basic Income, Socialism, and the Future of the Global Economy -

[PaleTay]

UBI would've been great before mass immigration. The cost of having everyone "work" is greater than paying UBI, and giving some people the chance to become great academics, entertainers, and artists or to create an entertaining project.

Working on the tl;dr, since I'm not reading this whole thing. UBI won't work because giving people money for nothing will incentivize them to blow it on worthless shit (namely gadgets/consooming/drugs). It will also be incredibly expensive and will fucking destroy the economy by devaluing the coin, especially when the people who already live on gibs will still get the extra money (so there is no way to at least save money on reducing government bloat).
Also the elites fucking love the idea. Like always the middle class will pay for this shit, while the rich will find a loophole to not pay a dime. The government is weaker, the middle class is weaker, and the rich and the corporations will be stronger than ever.

When your country has moved to needing to pay citizens because there are no more jobs, since the government chased away every employment option. The only real step is taking that government and putting its head on pikes and breaking the legs of the competition.
In Bloodborne.

Jobs which are worthless are worse than no jobs, and the worse case scenario would be an improvement from the current system. In an ideal or even average implementation of the system almost everyone would have more time and money because it would cut a lot of inefficiencies out of the world.

 

[Slap47]

This one's not exactly a news article, but it sparked my interest nonetheless.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/l9aqzf/the_utopia_mirage_universal_basic_income/

Introduction​

I see a great deal of talk on this subreddit about Universal Basic Income (UBI). I'll admit to not hating the idea, since I believe that if implemented correctly it could do a great deal of good. However, after reading the comments under this post, and reading the article that the post is about, I can't help but want to speak my mind on the matter. I admire the author of the article, Alex Vikoulov, for having the courage to mention capitalism and it's deleterious effects directly, but I believe that he falls short in suggesting ways to deal with the problem.

However, I also believe that correct, effective, long-term implementation of UBI is, in practical terms, impossible. Furthermore, I believe that UBI is, at best, only a stopgap solution to the real underlying problems of modern society and the modern economy, the main problem being the very system of capitalism itself.

I shall outline the reasoning behind all of these points below.

Part One: Impossibility​

It's no great secret that the modern global capitalist economy is enormously corrupt and hypocritical. Just a few days ago, we witnessed the Game Stop fiasco, which already has allegations of corruption and market interference flying freely. A fixture of this particular event has been the anger of the rich that poor people had the gall to make their lives slightly less easy.

Large sections of the global economy are controlled by monopolies and oligopolies, such as the American airline industry, which had been repeatedly accused of price fixing.

The company De Beers used to have a total monopoly on the global diamond market, and to this day spends a great deal of money advertising that "real" diamonds, I.E. those that are dug out of the ground as opposed to made in a laboratory, are more valuable or romantic than those which are artificially produced. This emphasis on "real" diamonds keeps their value high, and fuels the intensely violent and abusive diamond trade.

The same story is true of many oil companies.

Elon Musk, our beloved fellow "futurist" has tacitly admitted to having a stake in the coup against Evo Morales. (Some may say he was joking, but... really? In the wake of the overthrow of a government and a brutal military crackdown, Musk would think that it's funny to say "We will coup whoever we want"? Really?)

Infamously, the Ford motor company, upon discovering that its Pinto was quite prone to catching fire in collision and burning its occupants to death, did a cost analysis and determined that recalling and modifying the cars would be more expensive than the lawsuits from the victims would be, and so decided not to modify the cars, leading to thousands of injuries and deaths.

And then, of course, there is the habit that corporations have of lobbying the USA to instigate regime change, such as in Iran and Guatemala, regime changes which were brutal and violent in their means and consequences.

There are even unconfirmed reports that there was a coup plot against FDR, known today as the Business Plot, which was brought to light be decorated Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who testified about it under oath to congress; there was another supposed coup plot against Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

And, of course, I hardly need to mention the rampant corruption and utter control of the government by corporations in the modern day, to the point where the average citizen has basically no influence at all. And they want to keep it that way. You can see it for yourself in the Medicare for All debate; corporations almost unilaterally oppose it, because keeping healthcare tied to employment give them more power over their workers and society at large.

I say all this in an attempt to impress upon you, the reader, just how utterly ruthless private interests are and can be, and to what extend they will go to to protect their profits and power. Now, with this in mind, imagine attempting to implement Universal Basic Income, a system which not only will necessarily lead to very heavy taxes upon corporations and the wealthy, but will virtually annihilate their ability to control their workforce, since now income will be attainable independent of employment.

They will fight it tooth and nail. They will use every ounce of their very considerable influence over the media to demonize the idea (expect many accusations of "communism" or "impossibility"), and their very considerable influence over the politics of the United States and Europe to strangle any UBI legislation in the crib, and if that fails, then they will resort to more invasive measures.

UBI in the rest of the world would be impossible without such a program already existing in either the United States or Europe, since those are the two major world powers at the moment (excluding China, which, as a hyper-capitalist dystopia right out of Ayn Rand and Austrians' wet dreams, will never implement UBI for as long as the current regime exists), and they hold considerable influence over the rest of the world.

And even if UBI gets put in practice in Europe or America, it won't last. Corproations will regroup and counter-attack, unleashing a swarm of Reaganites and Thatcherites decrying the "onset of Bolshevism" (Nevermind that both Regan and Thatcher were fine with "Bolshevism" when it suited them). It won't matter how popular or effective UBI is, it will inevitably be repealed, and if people protest, they will be ignored at best, disenfranchised if they persist, and shot if they look like they might win.

This is why UBI is impossible: it is but one item in a long list of items that are genuinly good ideas, but will either never come to pass or will be violently cut short precisely because they are good ideas that work effectively, like the nationalization of the British railways or the public housing projects in Red Vienna.

They key failure that makes these ideas impossible is that they face the classic paradox that social democrats, progressives, liberals, centrists, "libertarians", conservatives, reactionaries, and fascists must all contend with: "How do we maintain capitalist systems without the downsides that are inherent in them?"

To be very fair, UBI is a very good way of dealing with those downsides. But, for that reason, it will never be allowed to persist, if it is ever allowed to exist at all.

The failure of UBI lies not in its concept, but rather in its relation to the problems it is designed to solve: the problems of capitalism. It is a stopgap solution to innate problems, meant to be a bandaid over much deeper issues.

Capitalism both requires and encourages poverty, an impoverished population is a population that will take any employment it can get, no matter how shitty. Capitalism is all about profit, and, at the end of the day, solving global issues like poverty, mass starvation (Nine million people die of starvation every year; I feel like too many people don't know that), mass death from preventable disease (1.5 million deaths), mass death from air pollution (4.2 million), and of course, climate change, just aren't profitable on the scale or timeframe that capitalists care about. These problems are innate, and will never go away.

By the way, if you take China out of the equation, the number of people in poverty is actually rising, not falling.

Part Two: The Alternative​

Socialism.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, I'll be going now.

...

Ok, fine, I'll explain.

The problem I identify in UBI is that it fundamentally threatens the power of people and institutions that react with extreme violence and force to any perceived threat, no matter how small. It's an untenable solution to the ills of capitalism not because it is ineffective, but because it is too effective; because those ills are not seen by the powerful as bugs, but as features.

So, the obvious answer to me is to dismantle capitalism. How would we do this? Well, it definitely won't be easy, for all the reasons laid out above. But we do live in systems at, at their core, are democratic. If enough people want something, it can be made to happen. The problem is making sure that it is permanent.

Nationalization isn't a viable option, people like Thatcher and Regan can just undo that whenever the economy goes south and people need a scapegoat; private interests know that that is a wonderful opportunity to point at the government.

So, what does that leave?

I propose two approaches, a "hard" and "soft" approach.

The hard approach is using a socialist and progressive congressional majority with a socialist president and liberal supreme court to systematically nationalize large businesses (have the government take control of them), and then socialize them (put them in the hands of their workers). Basically making every single large private entity a cooperative that is managed directly by its workers. This solution handily avoids long-term nationalization, which has been the downfall of many progressive or democratic socialist projects before, like in Great Britain.

This is very much legal and constitutional, although it will undoubtedly be challenged and put before the supreme court, and if its a conservative-majority court, then, well, we already know whose pockets they're in. Thus, it would probably require a liberal court.

Alternatively, a National Workplace Socialization law could be passed which would effectively socialize the entire economy, requiring all companies over a certain number of employees to be required to be cooperatives run on a model of workplace democracy. However, it would probably be harder to get this through congress, requiring a more left-leaning congressional majority, and it would definitely be put in front of the Supreme Court, and even a liberal court would balk at something so radical.

The soft approach is much more gentle and gradual, and would probably be less publicly divisive, although the wealthy and powerful would still be paying attention to what was going on. This alternative plan would entail the government nationalizing and then socializing any large or medium sized company that goes bankrupt, by demanding a controlling number of shares in exchange for a bailout, and then using that influence to force the company to socialize. Same result, much longer timespan. There's an article exploring a similar method, albeit for nationalization, here.

Worker cooperatives and other socialized workplaces have significant advantages over private enterprises, such as greater productivity and greater community benefits. They're awesome in a lot of ways, and you can find out more here.

Ironically enough, Universal Basic Income would be more feasible and more beneficial in a socialized economy, since there wouldn't be economic elites to battle against it at every turn, and the general public would already be more onboard with community-benefiting programs basically by default. Imagine a world where every job was well-paying and meaningful, where democracy existed not just at the ballot box, but in the workplace as well. If you didn't like your job, you could quit and live on UBI until you found a better one.

This is my vision of the future. A utopia; a worker's paradise.

Any vision of Universal Basic Income that seeks to reconcile it with capitalism is both morally commendable and highly flawed. That vision of utopia is false; a mirage.

Only by truly addressing the fundamental problem of capitalism that makes UBI necessary can we ever hope to have a world in which UBI is as prevalent as we all hope it will someday be.

Conclusion:​

TL;DR:

Universal Basic Income can never work in capitalist economies because corporations, interest groups, and the wealthy will always oppose it because it threatens their power, and use every bit of power and influence at their disposal (which is a whole lot) to stop it from happening or repeal it once it does.

Furthermore, UBI would only ever be a bandaid over the fundamental problems and contradictions of capitalism, and would have only a limited utility in partially alleviating them, although it would still be better than nothing.

The only way to successfully implement a UBI program is to first abolish capitalism through socializing workplaces, I.E. handing control of businesses over to the workers that run them. This will remove the power of said corporations, interest groups, and the wealthy, and cut off their ability to oppose UBI.

UBI can then be implemented without any bad-faith resistance, and we'll all live in a utopia, happily ever after.

The End.

Venezuela is what would happen.

Companies would be disconnected from the profit motive and be used as political tools. The ruthlessness of private business interests is often harmful, but it also increases efficiency. The Byzantine ruthlessness that you would see under nationalized businesses would make the private sector blush and eventually lead to shortages. You should have a few nationalized industries for things that would become natural monopolies, but you're still doing that at the cost of giving politicians a tool. Doing that with the entire economy would be national suicide.

The transition from State ownership to the workers owning things has never happened under socialist rule. Even a true socialist or even communist idealist would recognize the stupidity of giving up such power. Some groups of workers would be more conservative than desired by the party, and some would be incompetent and corrupt. What do they do when their collective business collapses and a more efficient business starts up somewhere else with the standard employer model? Well at Hugo Chavez walk up to the business and shout "expropriate it!".

UBI should happen but as a means to give people opportunities to better participate in the market system and sustain consumption. The consumption created by the Roman grain dole did wonders for Roman trade. However, it eventually became corrupted and used as a tool.

 

[Taylor Swift's Ghostwrite]

These ideas all work off the premise that people aren't super dedicated to finding ways to get ahead and improve their position. Capitalism kinda sucks and shit but at least its honest and doesn't pretend its going to somehow rewrite human nature into us all cooperating and living at the same level as each other.

These utopian ideals people come up with never align with reality because they close their eyes to the fact that human beings had to come together and write laws just to stop one dude from stealing everyone else's apples. And it wasn't even so much that they cared that he was stealing their neighbor's apple as much as they cared about their own. Even with the laws people just come up with creative ways to continue gaining more wealth at the expensive of others because if nothing else humans are dedicated to the power game.

 

[Meriasek]

UBI may be a good idea, but it has more problems than just corporations being against it. I have yet to see a plan to finance it that convinced me. Pretty much all plans and ideas end up with an annual deficit of quite a few billion dollars, and that's after spending basically every single cent of the entire national budget just on UBI. And that's when they're being honest. Usually there's just handwringing or just straight up lying.
So corporate interests aside, how can the UBI even be implemented? Of course, nationalization and taxing the rich. But what does nationalization bring? Seized assets aren't magically turned to cash you can give the people, and you can only seize them once. Taxing the rich doesn't work forever since they're not gonna stay rich. Heavily taxing the corporations and basically taking all their profits will basically destroy any market. And then you still have barely enough to cover the UBI, and no budget for literally anything else.
The salaries of the people who still work would also have to rise massively, and inequality would still be a thing.
Depending on how much of the national budget is from VAT, there'd also be an element of forced consumerism just to keep the wheels turning. With UBI you probably wouldn't be allowed to save money because it's just a big money shuffling scheme.
Once the ratio of productive workers to idle masses becomes too small, the whole thing will either collapse or create massive wealth disparity again. Not to mention that in a globalized economy it will collapse immediately.
I have yet to hear any proper solutions for the basic problems of UBI.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

USA already has basic income for one group of people...



Even a Boomer who never lifted a finger in their lifetime or worked a few hours a week is entitled to a basic income of their own after 65. It's interesting that they are usually the ones who really become angered at the UBI idea despite any support they get in old age being funded off the backs of the youngins'

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

However, I also believe that correct, effective, long-term implementation of UBI is, in practical terms, impossible. Furthermore, I believe that UBI is, at best, only a stopgap solution to the real underlying problems of modern society and the modern economy, the main problem being the very system of capitalism itself.

The problem of UBI is that the democrats only want social programs which can be reversed as a stick to prod and beat their outliers into voting for them, and Republicans don't know the difference between Ethos and Logos when it comes to fixing societial problems so they moralize on an abstract level like sociopaths while the poor drown in easily fixable disasters.

And, of course, I hardly need to mention the rampant corruption and utter control of the government by corporations in the modern day, to the point where the average citizen has basically no influence at all. And they want to keep it that way. You can see it for yourself in the Medicare for All debate; corporations almost unilaterally oppose it, because keeping healthcare tied to employment give them more power over their workers and society at large.

There are never new societies of new people, but new societies of technology and sophistication. The one, the few, and the many. These are the only power bases which have ever and will ever exist. Deny it, avoid it, pretend it is not so, but that fact will always remain. America was only the enthroning of the few over the many permanently. The faults of Rome were not examined by the Founding Fathers prior to their governmental virtues being enshrined! The One, the king, oppressed both the few and the many and so was rounded on by both under the false assumption that without a king the people would stay united, and maybe with Senators being the creatures of state governments and the states having the collective power to fight the federal government away it may have lasted. It did not last.

The king uses the masses against the robber barons politically but the masses use the king against the robber barons socially. That is the only power which has freed the people, Hitler sure but also Napoleon who alone could end the terror. The principle I suggest is that only the authority of a strong man, created and sustained by the people through their consent, who is the source of all political power alone can upset the system dreamt up by the rich.

The so-called alternative is to use leftist organizations. Good luck. The average leftist organizer is richer than you, they were born that way. Its a very well known trap for rich kids to fall into which allows the mothers and fathers to still have their child live a good life and feel that they "are making a difference" to boot. The aristocrats also get to control their opposition and the limits of disagreement, and the masses are considered too stupid to realize how their disagreement itself becomes just another commodity to purchase through donation. You get the feeling you're helping for a new low low fee.

So, the obvious answer to me is to dismantle capitalism. How would we do this? Well, it definitely won't be easy, for all the reasons laid out above. But we do live in systems at, at their core, are democratic. If enough people want something, it can be made to happen. The problem is making sure that it is permanent.

Nationalization isn't a viable option, people like Thatcher and Regan can just undo that whenever the economy goes south and people need a scapegoat; private interests know that that is a wonderful opportunity to point at the government.

It is impossible alone for the masses to overthrow the aristocrats, they can only destroy the society to spite them. Perhaps that is enough.

What is going to happen is that the thousand strings puppeting the masses will begin to be plucked like an instrument. The universities, the arts, the news agencies, and others spring to life to show how the transition period will have downsides and only potential upsides. The cost is hammered in and the benefit is ridiculed in the oft chance it is mentioned at all.

Conservatives are the odd lesson here, where do they win and where do they lose? They win when they make something new, a narrative, which cannot be killed. They lose when they try the same thing expecting a different result. You have to win in the battle of ideas, you have to create a new society around the idea, you have to make the battle itself implicit in the idea and the group holding the idea.

gamergate, r/TheDonald, r/Wallstreetbets

Which formed a social group, which of these implicitly had good and bad people to point at outside the group, which scared the powers that be? Ethos, logos, pathos. The one, the few, the many.

u/deepfuckingvalue and Donald Trump led the masses, and when they couldn't be wrestled free from the masses' support, the aristocrats lost ground. Gamergate had no one person to rally around and so it became a materialistic failure of customers having to pathetically argue that their own entertainment budgets were theirs to spend.

The hard approach is using a socialist and progressive congressional majority with a socialist president and liberal supreme court to systematically nationalize large businesses (have the government take control of them), and then socialize them (put them in the hands of their workers). Basically making every single large private entity a cooperative that is managed directly by its workers. This solution handily avoids long-term nationalization, which has been the downfall of many progressive or democratic socialist projects before, like in Great Britain.

This is very much legal and constitutional, although it will undoubtedly be challenged and put before the supreme court, and if its a conservative-majority court, then, well, we already know whose pockets they're in. Thus, it would probably require a liberal court.

I have no idea where you are getting your definitions of conservative-majority court & liberal court. Democrats are aristocratic since Clinton made the banks their primary source of funding. You may as well call Democrats right-wing. America has no communist party with any authority, no democratic socialists who are not the whores of the Democrats. Social liberalism practically is market liberalism in America outside of not fighting the idea of foodstamps continuing.

Mind you, I hate corporations. But I like sole proprietorship businesses, general partnerships, nonprofits, and cooperatives. There are middle grounds where you don't have to allow private societies (considered a legal person) to own assets and employees which pay out according to the number of membership tickets (stock) you hold. Ideas exist which oppose Corporations and Stock, creating new ones divides the masses into more easily defeatable groups.

I want labor to be more organized than businesses are socially & internally, but we need a man as a symbol to push the idea and hold the eye of the public. Only secret societies in terrible conditions have successful revolts, and even then they are rival aristocrats once they succeed. Like the Ring of Mordor, the legitimacy of aristocratic authority itself must be fought. That is the dragon, if there is only Xi Jinping or Emperor Napoleon and the people then the realm is protected even if power becomes more explicit than Biden and his corporate master implicitly decide today.

Alternatively, a National Workplace Socialization law could be passed which would effectively socialize the entire economy, requiring all companies over a certain number of employees to be required to be cooperatives run on a model of workplace democracy. However, it would probably be harder to get this through congress, requiring a more left-leaning congressional majority, and it would definitely be put in front of the Supreme Court, and even a liberal court would balk at something so radical.

The soft approach is much more gentle and gradual, and would probably be less publicly divisive, although the wealthy and powerful would still be paying attention to what was going on. This alternative plan would entail the government nationalizing and then socializing any large or medium sized company that goes bankrupt, by demanding a controlling number of shares in exchange for a bailout, and then using that influence to force the company to socialize. Same result, much longer timespan. There's an article exploring a similar method, albeit for nationalization, here.

Worker cooperatives and other socialized workplaces have significant advantages over private enterprises, such as greater productivity and greater community benefits. They're awesome in a lot of ways, and you can find out more here.

Chinese methods of control work only because they have a strong independent executive branch that will humiliate and kill the aristocrats who step out of line. That authority is mandatory, not an optional component curiously included in Red China. China owning stock in its businesses is downstream of this idea. It naturally follows. The emperor derives his power from the masses and the realm and so it is at least respected minimally.

This is my vision of the future. A utopia; a worker's paradise.

It is a noble sentiment to esteem one's tribe and wish greatness for it. However humanity must be appeased, our instincts must sense greatness at all times from every position within the society, or it will fall into failure and ruin. Hard power alone overcomes soft power. This is the horrible truth that successful upheavals follow and unsuccessful don't to the result of making new aristocratic forms (such as in the USSR where once the party left Lenin and Stalin behind it only replaced the royal court) without fixing the existing problems.

 

[round robin]

UBI may be a good idea, but it has more problems than just corporations being against it. I have yet to see a plan to finance it that convinced me. Pretty much all plans and ideas end up with an annual deficit of quite a few billion dollars, and that's after spending basically every single cent of the entire national budget just on UBI. And that's when they're being honest. Usually there's just handwringing or just straight up lying.
So corporate interests aside, how can the UBI even be implemented? Of course, nationalization and taxing the rich. But what does nationalization bring? Seized assets aren't magically turned to cash you can give the people, and you can only seize them once. Taxing the rich doesn't work forever since they're not gonna stay rich. Heavily taxing the corporations and basically taking all their profits will basically destroy any market. And then you still have barely enough to cover the UBI, and no budget for literally anything else.
The salaries of the people who still work would also have to rise massively, and inequality would still be a thing.
Depending on how much of the national budget is from VAT, there'd also be an element of forced consumerism just to keep the wheels turning. With UBI you probably wouldn't be allowed to save money because it's just a big money shuffling scheme.
Once the ratio of productive workers to idle masses becomes too small, the whole thing will either collapse or create massive wealth disparity again. Not to mention that in a globalized economy it will collapse immediately.
I have yet to hear any proper solutions for the basic problems of UBI.

If you can recognize all of these basically unsolvable issues regarding the core concepts of UBI surely you can just admit that it isn't a good idea at all?

 

[Meriasek]

If you can recognize all of these basically unsolvable issues regarding the core concepts of UBI surely you can just admit that it isn't a good idea at all?

Well yeah, of course. I meant it more in the sense that it's a nice/benevolent concept, but ultimately unlikely to be feasible before full automation/true post-scarcity, at which point money will have no real value anyway.

 

[Godbert Manderville]

As taxes go, VAT is highly efficient and causes fewer market distortions than does income tax, for example. For the unaware, VAT is a consumption tax ultimately levied on the end consumer and can have different rates on different types of goods and services (i.e. zero on food, childrens clothing, 1000% on gold toilets etc). However, VAT is still somewhat regressive because those on lower incomes end up paying more tax as a proportion of their income than those with higher incomes. This is not good. As a matter of justice, the broadest shoulders should carry the lions share of burdens. Were we to couple VAT with a UBI though the situation becomes highly progressive. Furthermore, if we eliminate all other taxes - bumping VAT up to as much as is necessary - we end up with a highly efficient and highly progressive system.

You wouldn't be able to switch to VAT-only overnight though as it would cause a serious economic shock. I'd say over the course of a decade you start phasing out other taxes - raising VAT to adequately compensate for the lost revenue. Then to avoid a serious social shock, over another decade you start raising VAT again, putting the receipts back into society every year until you have a full UBI. You could actually do both the above together if you were feeling especially brave. The UBI would be enough to live on without suffering any kind of economic anxiety over food, heating, or lodging, but it wouldn't buy you anything more because - to put it bluntly - masturbation and our parks are free. To have the Nice Things, able-bodied people would necessarily have to work. Wages could end up numerically lower, of course, but coupled with their UBI the net consumption power of any worker in this system would be at least equal to that under the current system. I say "at least" because the efficiency of the system is extremely likely to create economic boons.

There being no income tax, people would work longer and harder leading to increased productivity. They would know they could save every last penny of their wages, pass everything on to their children, and that would have a powerful psychological effect. People would be more entrepreneurial with their savings since the fear of utter destitution through risk-taking would be gone. The cumbersome government infrastructure around benefits and entitlements could mostly be gotten rid of leading to quite decent savings. As the UBI altered the fundamental culture of society by eliminating economic anxiety, violent crime would fall and we would not need to spend the same on policing and prisons that we do today. The tax law would be so simplified that neither corporations nor small businesses would need to spend and exert as much money and energy into non-productive accounting systems and services. As technology or changes in consumer behaviour made certain jobs obsolete those industries could simply be killed off and the workers would retrain, leading to a more efficient allocation of capital and labour. Corporate management, safety, and satisfaction would necessarily improve as bad management would be more quickly punished by resignations, safety concerns more readily pointed out, and discussions around reforming roles became freer.

Yes, there would be some people who do not become immediately productive, perhaps not for many years, because the system as it exists has broken them. It will take time but they will eventually heal and assume normal lives. This is my one article of faith in all this, truth be told. And if they never become productive and society ends up paying for their existence forever, the net effect will be little different than the current system where we still cannot avoid paying for their existences - in benefits, police, court, and medical costs, social care and prison costs, and not least the personal costs to their victims as they infect others with their despondency and rage. Give them instead a decade away from economic anxiety, take a leap of faith, see how they change. In those exact circumstances, you and I would have been no different.

 

[Meriasek]

As taxes go, VAT is highly efficient and causes fewer market distortions than does income tax, for example. For the unaware, VAT is a consumption tax ultimately levied on the end consumer and can have different rates on different types of goods and services (i.e. zero on food, childrens clothing, 1000% on gold toilets etc). However, VAT is still somewhat regressive because those on lower incomes end up paying more tax as a proportion of their income than those with higher incomes. This is not good. As a matter of justice, the broadest shoulders should carry the lions share of burdens. Were we to couple VAT with a UBI though the situation becomes highly progressive. Furthermore, if we eliminate all other taxes - bumping VAT up to as much as is necessary - we end up with a highly efficient and highly progressive system.

You wouldn't be able to switch to VAT-only overnight though as it would cause a serious economic shock. I'd say over the course of a decade you start phasing out other taxes - raising VAT to adequately compensate for the lost revenue. Then to avoid a serious social shock, over another decade you start raising VAT again, putting the receipts back into society every year until you have a full UBI. You could actually do both the above together if you were feeling especially brave. The UBI would be enough to live on without suffering any kind of economic anxiety over food, heating, or lodging, but it wouldn't buy you anything more because - to put it bluntly - masturbation and our parks are free. To have the Nice Things, able-bodied people would necessarily have to work. Wages could end up numerically lower, of course, but coupled with their UBI the net consumption power of any worker in this system would be at least equal to that under the current system. I say "at least" because the efficiency of the system is extremely likely to create economic boons.

There being no income tax, people would work longer and harder leading to increased productivity. They would know they could save every last penny of their wages, pass everything on to their children, and that would have a powerful psychological effect. People would be more entrepreneurial with their savings since the fear of utter destitution through risk-taking would be gone. The cumbersome government infrastructure around benefits and entitlements could mostly be gotten rid of leading to quite decent savings. As the UBI altered the fundamental culture of society by eliminating economic anxiety, violent crime would fall and we would not need to spend the same on policing and prisons that we do today. The tax law would be so simplified that neither corporations nor small businesses would need to spend and exert as much money and energy into non-productive accounting systems and services. As technology or changes in consumer behaviour made certain jobs obsolete those industries could simply be killed off and the workers would retrain, leading to a more efficient allocation of capital and labour. Corporate management, safety, and satisfaction would necessarily improve as bad management would be more quickly punished by resignations, safety concerns more readily pointed out, and discussions around reforming roles became freer.

Yes, there would be some people who do not become immediately productive, perhaps not for many years, because the system as it exists has broken them. It will take time but they will eventually heal and assume normal lives. This is my one article of faith in all this, truth be told. And if they never become productive and society ends up paying for their existence forever, the net effect will be little different than the current system where we still cannot avoid paying for their existences - in benefits, police, court, and medical costs, social care and prison costs, and not least the personal costs to their victims as they infect others with their despondency and rage. Give them instead a decade away from economic anxiety, take a leap of faith, see how they change. In those exact circumstances, you and I would have been no different.

Hm. Eliminating almost all taxes but VAT, is that all that's supposed to finance the UBI? Wouldn't that lead to forced consumption since it's just recirculating money that needs to be kept in circulation for the system not to crash? Think about it, for it to work people MUST spend a certain percentage of their total income (and likely nigh all of the UBI sum) just to keep the system going through VAT. If people actually saved money, there wouldn't be enough income through VAT, and there wouldn't be enough money for the UBI. Inheritance? The system is so tightly balanced that inheritance would likely be not legal. Building or buying houses? Forget it, construction costs will be magnitudes larger due to the VAT on such services, and none but the richest will be able to afford it.
The VAT also must be over a very broad range, going from very low for necessities to far more than 100% for... Basically everything else, just to get the financing done. Luxury goods would be truly luxury, everything would become massively more expensive and nothing would be gained. No income tax means that the rich can be rich without the state benefitting from their income. You just have to hope they buy expensive things and build houses and shit. As far as I can tell, it'll create a massive wealth disparity.
Most people will have money for the base necessities, and very little more.

 

[Godbert Manderville]

Hm. Eliminating almost all taxes but VAT, is that all that's supposed to finance the UBI? Wouldn't that lead to forced consumption since it's just recirculating money that needs to be kept in circulation for the system not to crash? Think about it, for it to work people MUST spend a certain percentage of their total income (and likely nigh all of the UBI sum) just to keep the system going through VAT. If people actually saved money, there wouldn't be enough income through VAT, and there wouldn't be enough money for the UBI. Inheritance? The system is so tightly balanced that inheritance would likely be not legal. Building or buying houses? Forget it, construction costs will be magnitudes larger due to the VAT on such services, and none but the richest will be able to afford it.
The VAT also must be over a very broad range, going from very low for necessities to far more than 100% for... Basically everything else, just to get the financing done. Luxury goods would be truly luxury, everything would become massively more expensive and nothing would be gained. No income tax means that the rich can be rich without the state benefitting from their income. You just have to hope they buy expensive things and build houses and shit. As far as I can tell, it'll create a massive wealth disparity.
Most people will have money for the base necessities, and very little more.

Existence has a basic cost that cannot be avoided. I agree that nigh all of the UBI sum would be spent, since I would expect it only at an amount that would assure existence and nothing else. While I personally am not advocating a VAT on staples - fruits and vegetables, dairy, bread et al - I would be fine with it applied to more processed foods. Neither am I under any illusions that VAT would not have to increase significantly on anything that was not considered vital to life. In Europe today VAT is considered normal at around 20%. Under a VAT-only system normality could be 200% or more. Luxury goods would be truly luxury, I concur, and I do not regard that as a bad thing. Rates could be tweaked depending on what kinds of consumption - and therefore production - we as a society deem the public good. As such, if there was a great need for housing then construction materials could be marked as VAT-exempt. Should an over-supply occur, VAT could be raised there. As proposed, this is something to bring into being over a decade so that the effects can be properly managed.

It's true that those with high incomes could retain and pass on that wealth if they lived as normal people. What we know of human nature though is that by-and-large those that have it spend it for the experience and the status, they take risks with it in business and investments, and those that inherit it eventually waste it (thereby returning it to the masses). However, even if those that made it or inherited it didn't touch a penny, they're going to keep it in a bank. The bank is going to lend it out to others at a multiple of what is deposited. With the exception of it being converted to physical coin and stored deep in some vault, saved fiat money remains in circulation through the banking system.

In essence though, this is a system for what I believe is coming in the next few decades - systems collapse. Our resource consumption levels are horribly unsustainable and we will have to penalize wasteful luxury consumption, focusing instead on what is actually necessary : healthy food, clothing that lasts, decent shelter, and strong community. A VAT-only system allows us to target that more easily than other systems. An economy would remain. There would still be builders and plumbers and teachers and medics and engineers and scientists and farmers. Innovation and wealth generation would still happen, as they do now. That's just one of those thankfully unavoidable aspects of human nature. This economy would be market based even. It would just have very different end goals - balance and renewability instead of endless growth and luxuries.

 

[Meriasek]

Existence has a basic cost that cannot be avoided. I agree that nigh all of the UBI sum would be spent, since I would expect it only at an amount that would assure existence and nothing else. While I personally am not advocating a VAT on staples - fruits and vegetables, dairy, bread et al - I would be fine with it applied to more processed foods. Neither am I under any illusions that VAT would not have to increase significantly on anything that was not considered vital to life. In Europe today VAT is considered normal at around 20%. Under a VAT-only system normality could be 200% or more. Luxury goods would be truly luxury, I concur, and I do not regard that as a bad thing. Rates could be tweaked depending on what kinds of consumption - and therefore production - we as a society deem the public good. As such, if there was a great need for housing then construction materials could be marked as VAT-exempt. Should an over-supply occur, VAT could be raised there. As proposed, this is something to bring into being over a decade so that the effects can be properly managed.

It's true that those with high incomes could retain and pass on that wealth if they lived as normal people. What we know of human nature though is that by-and-large those that have it spend it for the experience and the status, they take risks with it in business and investments, and those that inherit it eventually waste it (thereby returning it to the masses). However, even if those that made it or inherited it didn't touch a penny, they're going to keep it in a bank. The bank is going to lend it out to others at a multiple of what is deposited. With the exception of it being converted to physical coin and stored deep in some vault, saved fiat money remains in circulation through the banking system.

In essence though, this is a system for what I believe is coming in the next few decades - systems collapse. Our resource consumption levels are horribly unsustainable and we will have to penalize wasteful luxury consumption, focusing instead on what is actually necessary : healthy food, clothing that lasts, decent shelter, and strong community. A VAT-only system allows us to target that more easily than other systems. An economy would remain. There would still be builders and plumbers and teachers and medics and engineers and scientists and farmers. Innovation and wealth generation would still happen, as they do now. That's just one of those thankfully unavoidable aspects of human nature. This economy would be market based even. It would just have very different end goals - balance and renewability instead of endless growth and luxuries.

So basically you fully acknowledge that your system will basically eradicate everything up to upper middle class and turn it all into an blob of people too poor to get anywhere in life, with the only difference that those who work 40 hours a week can afford a steak every once in a while. While the upper class can rule absolutely unrestricted because they don't have to give a single fuck. Consider someone in the upper middle class. $70k/a, no income tax. Would there be VAT on rent? What's the VAT on all sorts of services? Cars, fuel, electricity? Living costs could potentially increase astronomically, and will likely eat up any gain, unless you're making up a ridiculously complex VAT system that somehow doesn't affect the bottom 3/4. Which makes VAT on certain things so high that only the top can afford it, leading to a massive wealth divide. And there's no market that could regulate it, because the cost is overwhelmingly just there to prop up the system that pumped the prices up in the first place. If somehow an ascetic lifestyle would become en vouge, shit would crumble fast, unless you literally outlaw frugality.
I agree that some form of UBI might come at some point as a result of widespread automation, but right now it's not going to work in my opinion, not without a lot of force. And that would not be a pleasant fight.

 

[Godbert Manderville]

So basically you fully acknowledge that your system will basically eradicate everything up to upper middle class and turn it all into an blob of people too poor to get anywhere in life, with the only difference that those who work 40 hours a week can afford a steak every once in a while. While the upper class can rule absolutely unrestricted because they don't have to give a single fuck. Consider someone in the upper middle class. $70k/a, no income tax. Would there be VAT on rent? What's the VAT on all sorts of services? Cars, fuel, electricity? Living costs could potentially increase astronomically, and will likely eat up any gain, unless you're making up a ridiculously complex VAT system that somehow doesn't affect the bottom 3/4. Which makes VAT on certain things so high that only the top can afford it, leading to a massive wealth divide. And there's no market that could regulate it, because the cost is overwhelmingly just there to prop up the system that pumped the prices up in the first place. If somehow an ascetic lifestyle would become en vouge, shit would crumble fast, unless you literally outlaw frugality.
I agree that some form of UBI might come at some point as a result of widespread automation, but right now it's not going to work in my opinion, not without a lot of force. And that would not be a pleasant fight.

I don't know why you're seeing such complexity in this proposal when it's actually much simpler than the tax laws we currently have. Right now we have multiple brackets of income taxes, payroll taxes, corporation taxes, insurance taxes, financial transaction taxes, capital gains taxes, Value Added Taxes, sales taxes, road taxes, fuel taxes, inheritance taxes, to name but the main ones. What is vital to understand is that all economic activity exists for consumption. Without a consumer somewhere, economic activity halts. A VAT-only system then is simply the hollowing out of all these intermediate taxations and the application of a single tax to the end of the process. We would charge someone 30 cents tax when they bought a burger, instead of charging them 10 cents when they earn, another 10 cents when they inherit, and the last 10 cents when they buy the burger. It amounts to the same tax taken overall, 30 cents; the individual retains the same net spending power. Only the timings change. And it's much more efficient, because we don't need a taxation infrastructure at all those intermediate stages.

Under a VAT-only system staple foodstuffs, children's clothing, construction materials et al would be subject to low or nil VAT, and luxury goods subject to a high VAT. How do we know what a luxury good is? We already have and use systems to identify luxuries - where the price of a good or service sits in relation to the average price in that class, or the average wage, or the engine size of a vehicle, or the fuel consumption, and so on and so forth. You seem to be of the belief that with a VAT-only system the same class of good or service will no longer be produced at different price points - that all the budget Android phones will disappear from the market and there will only be iPhones and Samsung Galaxy's left. This is not the case. And while those budget Android phones will be of a higher price, those who would consume them will be able to pay that price because the UBI will take care of the other stuff they need to buy. Most people in this world, at all points in history, under all taxation systems, have been employed, engaged in economic activity. This situation will not change under VAT-only. Homes will still need to be built. Things'll still break down and will need to be fixed. Transport of people and goods will still be a given. Children will still need to be educated. Research and Development will still need to happen. Soldiers will still be needed to guard the nation.

The example of an ascetic lifestyle taking over doesn't really worry me. If society deems that it doesn't want a certain type of consumption/production, by what right does anyone insist that they are wrong and must indeed want that consumption/production? Tastes change all the time. The market adjusts. Life goes on. Lastly, let us not fall to hyperbole. If under this system people would need to work 40 hours a week to afford the occasional steak, they simply would not work those 40 hours a week. The market will adjust to compensate the worker at a level that is agreeable to him for his 40 hours of labour. It would have no choice. After all, unlike under the current system that worker would be under no fear of starvation.

 

[Cool Dog]

Someone should tell this unironic retard what BASIC means

It means the bare minimum you need to survive, so you wont starve and rebel, get it? thats why the same billionaires who have SHTF bunkers in New Zealand are supporting this

Universal Basic Income, a system which not only will necessarily lead to very heavy taxes upon corporations and the wealthy, but will virtually annihilate their ability to control their workforce, since now income will be attainable independent of employment.

That wont happen, what they'll do is give you your UBI in funny money you can only spend in whatever they decide you can buy

Dont like it? get fucked and starve

As for muhsocialism and nationalization, every country that did that (Argentina, Venezuela) went to shit with productivity dropping to the point where they went from exporters to importers. All those nationalized companies became infested with yes-men and retards who only got there because they had friends inside. Anyone who actually worked or knew how to do shit quits or gets fired because some socialist higher up needed that position for his nephew. Either way they bleed talent away until it all crumbles down at which point everything gets stolen and the companies become a husk kept alive only thru insane taxation forced upon the population by the socialist state

These first-world socialism fanboys should be forced to live in Venezuela for at least a year by their own means, that means no savings from abroad or money from daddy. Get shipped to caracas and get a job then see if you survive. I bet you not even one will defend this shit after a year of eating nothing but arepas with rat meat which is what they can afford with the local minimum wage of fucking $2 a month

 

[PaleTay]

Someone should tell this unironic retard what BASIC means

It means the bare minimum you need to survive, so you wont starve and rebel, get it? thats why the same billionaires who have SHTF bunkers in New Zealand are supporting this

That wont happen, what they'll do is give you your UBI in funny money you can only spend in whatever they decide you can buy

Dont like it? get fucked and starve

As for muhsocialism and nationalization, every country that did that (Argentina, Venezuela) went to shit with productivity dropping to the point where they went from exporters to importers. All those nationalized companies became infested with yes-men and retards who only got there because they had friends inside. Anyone who actually worked or knew how to do shit quits or gets fired because some socialist higher up needed that position for his nephew. Either way they bleed talent away until it all crumbles down at which point everything gets stolen and the companies become a husk kept alive only thru insane taxation forced upon the population by the socialist state

These first-world socialism fanboys should be forced to live in Venezuela for at least a year by their own means, that means no savings from abroad or money from daddy. Get shipped to caracas and get a job then see if you survive. I bet you not even one will defend this shit after a year of eating nothing but arepas with rat meat which is what they can afford with the local minimum wage of fucking $2 a month

That's already the end goal of this form of "capitalism". We already have decaying systems because companies are run by retards who only see success because they're established monopolies, sociopaths, or empowered by governments to create near monopolies.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

We're under plutocracy. People are just too stupid to see it. I wonder what will happen when self declared ''Libertarian'' Gen Z college students graduate and find they can't get a fucking job that pays more than three dollars above minimum wage and have to move into a rooming house or remain with mom and dad because they're too poor to live despite working full time.

Wages are not keeping up with inflation. UBI is only a start, what we really need is reform of governments. They caused this problem.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

Remember when you were kids and your school decided to have a mock election? What did the candidates always say? "Vote for me and I'll give everyone a free pony/a million dollars/ a mansion, etc. " Everyone knew that the candidates weren't really going to hand everybody treasures if elected, but they voted anyways to the candidate that promised the most. In many ways, grown up elections are just like this. We all know that politicians don't give a shit about the people and will do whatever their corporate sponsors say, but we vote for the guys who promise the most gibs anyways. If they manage to throw a few shekels in our direction, we consider it a win. But deep down we know the purpose of the election isn't to give us anything. It's all just a show. It's putting out your stockings at Christmas and hoping that Santa is real and will come by to fill them. At the age of 38.

 

[Banworld]

Why doesn't one of these commie tranny programmers just invent some shitecoin based on Ethereum with a smart contract baked into the design that automatically redistributes wealth every few blocks so they can live out their technofuturist commie fantasies?

 

[Drain Todger]

The author is completely wrong about UBI. Corporations are actually trying to push for various forms of soft socialism, including an UBI, because it's a government subsidy for their business.

Imagine you're a businessman, and the government comes up to you and says "Hey, guess what? We'll pay a portion of your workers' wages, and they'll spend that on your goods." You'd immediately get a stiffy hard enough to bust through the ceiling.

And, indeed, this is what you see. One of the biggest proponents of an UBI in the US was Andrew Yang, and he's in the pocket of Silicon Valley.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/12/30/here-are-the-billionaires-donating-to-andrew-yangs-presidential-campaign/?sh=4ddfda85135d

Both capitalism and socialism have massive problems, and those problems both stem from the same source. The price system. You see, money and prices aren't actually real things. Their value is entirely normative. That is, inside our heads. The very idea that money and capital even exist in the first place is just an opinion. Or, less charitably, a shared hallucination. The way the price system works, we agree to pretend that prices are real things, so that money can act as a stand-in for goods and we don't have to lug bags of rice with us everywhere we go in order to pay for things. So far, so good.

The problem is when you inject the so-called high finance into the equation. You see, there is a class of people on this planet who collect massive incomes from economic rent, but they do not labor for it. These people are the landlords, insurance company owners, hedge fund managers, and bankers.

The reason why so many people are now demanding an UBI and socialism is because they have asked the Forbidden Question. Namely, why are they laboring and renting and going into debt endlessly, but they can't afford a house or the basic necessities to start a family, and meanwhile, some sons of bitches out there are reclining in their wing-backed chairs and collecting economic rents and using this unearned wealth to pay for the real goods that are the products of the working class's labor.

https://renegadeinc.com/elite-power-and-unearned-wealth/

This is all provably the case, but taboo to talk about. Thomas Piketty showed that R > G; the return on capital investment will always outpace the growth of wages, which is another way of saying "shit flows uphill". The Fed can tweak the rate of inflation, which is just another way of saying that they can adjust how fast you have to run in your hamster wheel in order to stay in the same place. Banks do a little thing called fractional reserve lending where they make up money out of thin air to lend to people, and are repaid the principal, plus interest, with real money. Short-sellers borrow and sell shares that they actually don't own, in the hopes of buying them back later at a cheaper price. Hedge funds package up and sell collections of subprime mortgage bonds and other dodgy derivatives as if they were investments as opposed to a sinkhole in the ground that they just invited you to step in.

In other words, modern market capitalism, as we know it, works less like a true free market economy and more like a system of organized, deliberate fraud that concentrates wealth at the top by means of cronyism and regulatory capture.

The irony of the conservative support for capitalism is that the wealthiest capitalists are, themselves, not very hard workers proportionate to their gains, and on top of that, the wealthy Elites are the ones pushing consumerism and degenerate behavior in the hopes of creating an easily controlled serf class.

There are no trad capitalists. Every hyper-capitalist is pozzed as fuck and would love nothing more than for you to become a soulless, empty, consumerist bugman with no political power whatsoever. They hate conservatives and "nativists" because they represent a large, contiguous bloc of labor power that is opposed to outsourcing, immigration, and other things that depress wages. Capitalists want to pay you in peanuts. They literally want to pay you the bare minimum that it is possible to pay someone, and take the largest possible share of profits and pocket it.

When people start talking about a wealth tax, crybaby billionaires go on live TV and cry great big crocodile tears at the idea that they might be multi-millionaires instead of billionaires.

Billionaires use lobbying and "philanthropy" to spread their influence, and from the perspective of working-class people, this influence is always malign. Bill Gates goes around telling people they all need to be vaccinated, when he isn't a medical doctor. The Sackler family poisoned America's Rust Belt with opioids, even as they pretended to be the most charitable souls in the world. Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg colluded with think tanks, activists, and other shit-eaters to censor people online.

Another problem with our society is that a lot of what we call work isn't actually work at all, but pointless and Byzantine make-work that serves no purpose whatsoever. Corporate lawyers, telemarketers, bean-counters and paper-shufflers, people who tick boxes all day because some regulator made them do it, et cetera.

Socialism has dire problems, too. Nobody ever got around the calculation problem, which is just another way of saying that central planners cannot figure out what people actually need if there is no button that those people can mash to vote for what they want, because that's what prices and supply and demand fundamentally are; a form of vote. And, of course, state socialism, far from granting workers the right of self-determination and agency over their lives, has typically concentrated insane power into the hands of small cliques of murderous, despotic lunatics. Just ask the bones of Phnom Penh if they thought communism made them free.

People get really ticked off when you tell them all this, and that's because people are brainwashed from a very young age to get used to punching a clock, meeting a schedule, and dancing to the boss's tune. That's a large part of what our schools actually teach. Acceptance of the inevitability of an imposed routine. People are emotionally attached to their jobs. When you tell someone that their job serves no purpose whatsoever and their work is non-work, they often take it as a personal assault on their identity. A large part of what people consider as their identities is literally embodied in their work. It's right in people's surnames. Smith. Potter. Tanner. It's not like anyone in developed countries really goes out and grabs their hammer and tongs and beats on metal all day, or shapes clay pottery with their bare hands, or tans leather on a rack. Everything we use in modern society was pressed, cast, or extruded in a machine, requiring very little skill or personal development. There are still people with those names, of course.

People need goals, but they also need the feeling that they're actually fulfilling those goals and getting somewhere with their lives. Modern society has replaced personal achievement with Sisyphean drudgery that seemingly serves no purpose. This isn't just a consequence of the structure of our societies. It's by design. People are being systematically excluded from upward mobility in developed countries. In the past twenty years, giant depressions in the US caused by FIRE industry gambling have shut Millennials entirely out of home ownership. You're talking about an entire generation of relatively young people who will find it very difficult to start families and raise their kids when they're trapped in apartments.

The wealthy Elites have systematically dismantled the middle class, and no one has made them answer for it. Left-wingers have been tricked into attacking what few middle-class people there are left, claiming that the Kulaks don't deserve their gentrified neighborhoods. Right-wingers are stuck singing the praises of a hyper-capitalist billionaire class that is deliberately torpedoing the futures of America's children, promoting promiscuity and mindless consumerism, and replacing upward mobility with actual goddamn serfdom.

Meanwhile, the Elites inject identity politics into the class struggle to divide working-class people into innumerable warring factions, fearing the torches and pitchforks that would come for them otherwise. If people are debating on the cup sizes of video game characters and gay representation in Star Trek, I can tell you what they're not doing, and it's advocating for their own financial futures over the unchecked ambitions of the billionaire Elites.

UBI won't solve the fundamental problem of our society, which is that out-of-touch, deranged rich people are paying huge sums of money for the future that they want to live in, while the rest of us suck it up.

 

[(not) y2k compliant]

You have created an experiment to prove the concept of UBI. Please check from the following reasons why your experiment is not at all valid or related to UBI:

[ ] Not Universal - You applied a criteria for selection of who receives assistance.
[ ] Not Basic - You provided insufficient capital compared to the economic theory underpinning UBI.
[ ] Not Income - You provided redemption services instead of cash payments for people to use as they please.