Is Universal Basic Income the way forward?

JimmyVik

Wanderer78 wrote: »

jaysis, some gymnastics going on here!

where did i claim people cant identify whatever a welfare waster is, what even is that?

where have i said taxes are raised in advance, in order to fund public expenditure?

Very short memory too i see.
As I said. I give up.

Wanderer78

JimmyVik wrote: »

Very short memory too i see.
As I said. I give up.

i do indeed have memory issues, but thats another story, but i have to largely agree with you, there is indeed no such thing as a welfare waster, but there are in fact welfare claimants. im also glad to see others admit, including yourself, taxes arent raised first, in order to facilitate public expenditure, hence pup payments etc

oh no genius here, just a normal human being

ZeroThreat

biddyearley wrote: »

Nope.


I have no plans to work ever harder to subsidize a not-insubstantial portion of the population, including those who point-blank refuse to work, and those in receipt of a payment of having a "disability" or a subsidy for who knows what. Local social welfare officers have discretion to fork out money for home furnishings and such like.


Enough is enough. Teach kids the value of work, how our society should function. When hard questions are asked how some non-working people in receipt of state money can afford a smartphone and several trips to Spain each year, and their state payments are adjusted in light of this, then I might be interested in helping some more those who genuinely have a hard time.


This woke outlook is too much.

Well if you don't like it, the departures gate is -->>>>> that way ....

biddyearley

ZeroThreat wrote: »

Well if you don't like it, the departures gate is -->>>>> that way ....

Why should I leave my own country?

Geuze

JimmyVik wrote: »

Sounds to me like I will be paying more tax as will most people.

- 40% on everything.
- No tax credits and no reliefs

- Employers pay more tax too

Yes, the 40% flat tax on all income means most workers effective income tax rate would rise.

However, you would get the UBI, so you would have to account for that.

You would need a spreadsheet to see the changes in net income across the income distribution.

I feel that 45% would actually be needed.

Wanderer78

Geuze wrote: »

Yes, the 40% flat tax on all income means most workers effective income tax rate would rise.

However, you would get the UBI, so you would have to account for that.

You would need a spreadsheet to see the changes in net income across the income distribution.

I feel that 45% would actually be needed.

again, is all of this based on running balanced budgets?

ZeroThreat

biddyearley wrote: »

Why should I leave my own country?

Well no one's forcing you to leave, but if you decide to stay you'll have to accept whatever the powers that be decide either now or in the future with regard to social or taxation policy no matter how much you dislike it.

mouthful

There is a petition seeking the introduction of the ubi for the arts ASAP https://siptu.agitate.ie/act/universal-basic-income-for-the-arts-now

PuddingBreath

PanMyHans wrote: »

Benefits:
1. Remove the unfair stigma from unemployed.
2. It will enable society to pursue endeavours outside of work
3. People will be happier
4. Classism and sexism will be reduced.

only if those who get it have to contribute to society in exchange. the problem is some people will never contribute/help society and the rest of us don't want to pay for them. Currently we're unoffically working to pay for some louts to hang around drinking, doing drugs, littering, stealing etc while a farcial sututaion happens where they'll attend the dole office and be asked where they looked for work recently, maybe a diffenent appoach is needed currently to "wash out" these people from the system, that approach being that -you get 5 years dole- after that you're on your own. you have 5 years to upskill yourself, get training, learn a skill, maybe let people get the dole for a couple of years while working to give them a start in life, but then off you go, good luck.



the other problem is, if the government are giving you it then T&C's will apply. If you want you UBI then you gotta "take the shot", you gotta "take that tweet down" you "can't think that way".

seemingly this is life in china already

peasant

PuddingBreath wrote: »

Currently we're unoffically working to pay for some louts to hang around drinking, doing drugs, littering, stealing etc

You know who you're also paying for?

The ones that have money coming out their ears but manage to hide it all away from taxation (legally and sometimes illegally) making you pay their share.

You can bet your hard earned that it costs you and the economy a lot more to pay their share than the one for the lazy louts. At least their money goes straight back into the economy.
The other lot's money is in the Cayman Islands, out of reach.

But the Cayman money steers the public opinion and hence it's the louts that are the public enemy number one and the Cayman money can sit back, relax and watch the infighting.

Strumms

Kirby wrote: »

UBI raises wealth and decreases poverty. It will actually lead to less population, not more.

I disagree.. By decreasing poverty in this manner potentially it makes Ireland more of a target for people seeking to move here. Both from the EU, legally as well as more people seeking asylum..

Thelonious Monk

Strumms wrote: »

I disagree.. By decreasing poverty in this manner potentially it makes Ireland more of a target for people seeking to move here. Both from the EU, legally as well as more people seeking asylum..

Well I mean that's just saying we shouldn't increase our standards of living across the board in case it makes Ireland a more attractive place to live. Should we be doing the opposite?!

Strumms

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Well I mean that's just saying we shouldn't increase our standards of living across the board in case it makes Ireland a more attractive place to live. Should we be doing the opposite?!

No, we should remain in a situation where a ‘basic’ standard of living is provided for everyone...it already is... social welfare..

But those who want a quality of life, nice car, holidays.... as I’ve always aspired to, work for it, better myself to qualify and attain a job that brings a quality of life that I would like... but that’s attained and compensated to me through my suitable efforts and expertise and... WORK.. and EDUCATION.

If I want a lifestyle suitable where it will cost me 30,000 in outgoings a year...

I’ll look for a job paying...

Gross 70,000
Tax 23,000
Net. 47,000

About 3,915 per month, net salary.

That 23,000 TAX I want going into a pot, paying for more Gardai, better hospitals, transport, roads, healthcare....

Wanderer78

Strumms wrote: »

No, we should remain in a situation where a ‘basic’ standard of living is provided for everyone...it already is... social welfare..

But those who want a quality of life, nice car, holidays.... as I’ve always aspired to, work for it, better myself to qualify and attain a job that brings a quality of life that I would like... but that’s attained and compensated to me through my suitable efforts and expertise and... WORK.. and EDUCATION.

If I want a lifestyle suitable where it will cost me 30,000 in outgoings a year...

I’ll look for a job paying...

Gross 70,000
Tax 23,000
Net. 47,000

About 3,915 per month, net salary.

That 23,000 TAX I want going into a pot, paying for more Gardai, better hospitals, transport, roads, healthcare....

so if welfare is good enough, why was it almost doubled overnight, at the beginning of covid for many?

Strumms

Wanderer78 wrote: »

so if welfare is good enough, why was it almost doubled overnight, at the beginning of covid for many?

Because nobody then knew the medium or long term impact of covid.

They DID know that it wasn’t going to be fixed quickly.

They did know that people who worked with families etc, could not seek employment, it wasn’t safe to do so, or in most cases to continue in employment..

Covid put a gun to our collective heads... nobody put a gun to anybody’s head in non covid Times telling them to not want to get a job, improve themselves, educate, upskill etc.... doesn’t happen.

JimmyVik

mouthful wrote: »

There is a petition seeking the introduction of the ubi for the arts ASAP https://siptu.agitate.ie/act/universal-basic-income-for-the-arts-now

Wait now ...
So who is going to give that free money to the artists?
Can anyone become an artist?

Wanderer78

Strumms wrote: »

Because nobody then knew the medium or long term impact of covid.

They DID know that it wasn’t going to be fixed quickly.

They did know that people who worked with families etc, could not seek employment, it wasn’t safe to do so, or in most cases to continue in employment..

Covid put a gun to our collective heads... nobody put a gun to anybody’s head in non covid Times telling them to not want to get a job, improve themselves, educate, upskill etc.... doesn’t happen.

true for a lot of the above, but what actually causes long term unemployment, and is welfare truly enough to survive on?

Wanderer78

JimmyVik wrote: »

Wait now ...
So who is going to give that free money to the artists?
Can anyone become an artist?

what free money, where? and yes, anybody can indeed become an artist

PuddingBreath

peasant wrote: »

You know who you're also paying for?

The ones that have money coming out their ears but manage to hide it all away from taxation (legally and sometimes illegally) making you pay their share.

You can bet your hard earned that it costs you and the economy a lot more to pay their share than the one for the lazy louts. At least their money goes straight back into the economy.
The other lot's money is in the Cayman Islands, out of reach.

But the Cayman money steers the public opinion and hence it's the louts that are the public enemy number one and the Cayman money can sit back, relax and watch the infighting.

You're 100%. I guess it affects us ordinary folk more visible at the lower end when we're being robbed or the streets are dirty. It's gas when u hear that politicians need to be paid well so they can't be corrupted... Really! Lol. Just makes them greedier. I would advocate not paying them at all, they'd be like rats off a ship. It would be worth a try. I'd hope you would just get people from all walks of society not motivated by greed, probably not though

the beer revolu

PuddingBreath wrote: »

You're 100%. I guess it affects us ordinary folk more visible at the lower end when we're being robbed or the streets are dirty. It's gas when u hear that politicians need to be paid well so they can't be corrupted... Really! Lol. Just makes them greedier. I would advocate not paying them at all, they'd be like rats off a ship. It would be worth a try. I'd hope you would just get people from all walks of society not motivated by greed, probably not though

I imagine you'd get wealthy power hungry people.

biddyearley

ZeroThreat wrote: »

Well no one's forcing you to leave, but if you decide to stay you'll have to accept whatever the powers that be decide either now or in the future with regard to social or taxation policy no matter how much you dislike it.[/QUOTl



ROFL

PuddingBreath

the beer revolu wrote: »

I imagine you'd get wealthy power hungry people.

Probably, at the moment we're in that situation anyway imo, we have a lot of politicans with vested interests, i.e. they have other businesses, are landlords etc They should be made divest all of that before being allowed in the dail. Might be a start.

Switzerland recently voted against UBI.

If they were to give it and there was no income tax implications then I'd be all for it. There'd be nothing to stop/punish people earning more . You could scrap a lot of the civil service bloat dealing with social security/dole if a UBI replaced it.

Geuze

Geuze wrote: »

I tend to ignore these statements like "automation / robots will wipe out many jobs".

Complete rubbish.

Think about it, take the year 2019:

• there has never been as much automation in history
• yet employment was high
• unemployment was low
• and there are labour shortages in some areas

You are right, perhaps, because AI probably won't replace most human activity.

The same fears were probably around as horse power was on the way out.

If the fears were for Horses, then they were genuine. Horses don't work much anymore, except to race..

If AI is as smart as humans then we are the new horses. I don't think AI will replace humans, because it isn’t that smart.

OMM 0000

I was CTO of an AI company for 5 years.

Almost everything you see on the BBC, etc., about AI is complete bollox. (Makes me wonder what else are they lying about... probably everything).

Let's take deep learning as an example. Deep learning is really good at very specific tasks. For example, you could use deep learning to detect whenever a cymbal is hit during a song. You could even train it to detect what sort of cymbal it is, and how hard it has been struck. It's our most powerful AI technique.

To do this require massive computing power (RAM and GPU), takes a long time to train, and is slow. Slight deviations from the training would result in false negatives or false positives.

So what is this good for?

Let's imagine you have a junior employee whose job is to check forms before passing them on to a senior employee who will process the form. Deep learning can get rid of the form checking job.

That's basically where we're at now. We're a long way (probably never) from the senior employees job being taken as nuance is a very human skill and can't really be replaced with an algorithm.

Mister Know It Not

Kirby wrote: »

The simple answer to the question is, yes. And it's inevitable. It's not a question of if but rather when. Rising population and increased automation. There simply won't be enough jobs to go around. New job sectors will open up of course and the arts aren't going anywhere but still, it won't be enough. I know some people like to state decreasing birthrates but that isn't understanding the issue. Automation isn't going to go away and will just increase.

Every major nation in the developed world will end up with some form of UBI.

Exactly this.

We can see it going on all around us: cashiers at the supermarket, and right next to them a bank of automated cashiers where we scan in our own stuff, with one person supervising it.

Driverless cars being phased in. Convenient for some, but truck drivers and taxi drivers are out of a job.

Other jobs are created, sure. Drone supervisor/engineer for local pizza delivery joint. Replacing, say, 4 to 6 delivery staff.

Even some jobs deemed to be relatively automation proof (e.g. translation) are being impacted by AI, and that will accelerate.

It's not that difficult to see the writing on the wall – less available jobs, and still a lot of humans around who need to eat and feed their families. Of course no stigma should be attached to someone whose job has been automated out of existence.

This laserlike focus, for example on this board, on how some people may be abusing the current system seems entirely out of place when dealing with this global problem. Automation is taking place to save money and add convenience (sort of – moving banks entirely online and automating the online support system also adds plenty of inconvenience)...

So once a lot of the workload that is how we currently organise effort and money is transferred to robots/machines of various kinds – why shouldn't humans scale back their weekly workload and still be able to survive? Why shouldn't humans as a whole benefit from these advances in technology?

Consider the alternative: those who own the machines make loads of money while those who can't find a job (because there simply aren't enough jobs for plain old human beings to go around) barely get by, and then get stigmatised. And frustrated. I can't really see that as being sustainable... or having a good outcome.

Some form of UBI is inevitable. It's just a matter of how we get there.

defrule

The problem I see with UBI is that, if we don't solve housing then rent will just go up by the amount of UBI.

We need to solve housing as well.

Ubbquittious

defrule wrote: »

The problem I see with UBI is that, if we don't solve housing then rent will just go up by the amount of UBI.

We need to solve housing as well.

Housing problem is artificial. Like the fella sitting on the donkey dangling a carrot in front of him to make him run at the desired speed. Government don't want to solve it because they are that fella.



If there is a problem the government really want to do something about (such as making sure the legal MDMA loophole got closed like in 2015) they'll stay up to all hours of the night to make sure it gets done.

Geuze

Mister Know It Not wrote: »

Driverless cars being phased in. Convenient for some, but truck drivers and taxi drivers are out of a job.

Other jobs are created, sure. Drone supervisor/engineer for local pizza delivery joint. Replacing, say, 4 to 6 delivery staff.

As stated earlier in this thread, automated trucks to deliver to Spar in Mullinahone? Over Irish roads? We'll be waiting.

The Manna drone delivery in Oranmore is staffed, two people travel to each house in a car, to meet the drone.

Cilldara_2000

Geuze wrote: »

Here is some information on the SJI proposal.

(NB: I do not endorse this, it's just FYI)

https://www.socialjustice.ie/content/publications/delivering-basic-income-pilot-videos-and-presentations


Eligibility and Structure (This is the SJI 2016 proposal)

Social Justice Ireland has costed many versions of a Universal Basic Income over the past 25 years. For example, in our 2016 conference paper entitled Costing a Basic Income for Ireland, we proposed a partial Universal Basic Income starting at €150 per week, that was fair, efficient and sustainable. This paper was an exercise in showing how a UBI could be paid for in Ireland within current structures. It was not a paper advocating at what rate a UBI should be set, however the following are some of the basic eligibility conditions and details of that version of a partial UBI, which may be instructive in any debate on its introduction:

• Payment would be conditional on residency within Ireland. In line with current welfare requirements, non-citizens must have lived here for a number of years before becoming entitled to a UBI.
• The level of the payment would be age-dependent.
• Payment would be constant and does not change upon the taking up of employment or the acquiring of other income.
• All income, aside from the UBI payment, would be subject to tax at one single rate of 40 per cent. All other income tax rates, as well as Employee PRSI and Universal Social Charge, are abolished. The rationale for using a tax rate of 40 per cent was to show what could be achieved in the prevailing context in 2016. Raising the necessary funds on the basis of a more progressive taxation model would be preferable.
• The Employer PRSI rate would increase to 13 per cent.
• There would be no tax credits or tax reliefs.
• The UBI would replace almost all core welfare payments, payments in respect of disability, illness and other additional needs would be retained.

https://www.socialjustice.ie/content/policy-issues/post-covid-19-basic-income-how-its-paid-and-how-get-there



So 150 UBI per week needs a 40% income tax rate.

The attached shows how literally everyone who works would be better off under this scheme based on the normal single person's tax credits and cut off point. It's rather amazing that a quango like this crowd has a proposal that would actually benefit people who work.

OTOH you could imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth when "almost all core welfare payments" are reduced to €150 per week. Surely even around here we could agree that reducing the contributory pension of people who paid a stamp their entire life by almost €100 a week would be incredibly unfair.

JimmyVik

Thinking about this now. If they gave me a UBI of €150 or more per week today I could just start drawing the pension retire today.
It would save me another 15 or so years of slogging into work
Might not be a bad idea after all.