Here is the News.

That, presumably, is about unemployed people. Pensioners only need to wipe their own old arses. Pensioners get by.. but nobody thinks that people relying on the state pension are having it large. UBI is not intended to enable large. The state pension is, in almost every sense, a UBI for people who are old enough. So is it such a stretch to say that it’s a decent pointer to a realistic UBI designed to give the option to live equally non-large to others who can’t or don’t want to work?

I’m not putting anything on ‘balance sheets’. Partly because I know what a balance sheet is. Partly because I put my trust in the very many economists and researchers that say it adds up. There’s only so much effort I’m going to put into rebutting a nonsense total cost that you came up with founded on the notion that whatever level UBI is set at, multiplying it by the total population and saying ‘that’s what this costs’. You’re dragging this into the weeds over the plushness of housing that might be available to the small number of people who choose the lowest-level subsistence conceivable.. when you’re opposed on a much more fundamental level. Why do you give a shit if Billy the aspiring artist decides to take a shit bedsit rather than take on some gig-work so he can afford a slightly less shit bedsit?

You admit that the current system for ‘incentivising’ arse-wipers is bad. As an employer, it kinda benefits you though, right? I’m not a business owner, but I have no shortage of experience of employing people.. and it sure-as-shit benefits me. Is your opposition to changing the system that you don’t think it will work? Or that you’re concerned that it will?

Pensioners get by mostly with private pensions, savings, investments and property. Using these as a reference point for subsistence is flawed because they have accrued wealth over their lifetime that they are now spending.

This whole job seems to be set up to enable Billy the Artist to do what he wants, good for Billy the Artist and very comfortable economic types. Obviously not seeing any benefit for John the Manufacturer or as you state above, the mainstream. If the economist shits the bed when greeted with a practical example - The figures are wrong, I couldn't comment on that situation, oh yes you'll still need that benefit, all the menial jobs we'll just automate, history is littered with successful examples of social housing working just brilliantly - not surprising it's a tough sell to the mainstream either.

So yes, 100% protecting castle here, some of us are very wedded to capitalism even if we don't enjoy it.

UBI is not remotely contradictory to capitalism. UBI is essentially Keynesian theory in action, but applied more efficiently. Capitalists fucking love Keynes.

So do Deacon Blue.

Here's a really interesting piece, rather than reading research papers you can read about a whole bunch of times that UBI was actually implemented and it worked exactly as intended.

www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/24/universal-basic-income/

Most of those seem to be giving guaranteed money to small groups of low income individuals. It's a huge leap from there to paying everyone. (And abolishing cash, apparently.)

Far too economically illiterate to participate in this thread, but I do think UBI is very interesting and that this exactly the sort of grown-up conversation that governments, and those who hope to form a government, should be having but probably aren't because they're too short-sighted and scared to suggest anything radically different to the way things already are (ie: a bit shit).

That is what most models of UBI do though, I.e. guarantee everyone basic income of X and it's achieved through negative taxation if your income is below X. It's not generally about giving people who already have X, X on top of what they already have. The consequence is rich or poor from their own means or otherwise everyone has (at least) X with the upshot that nobody is poor.

This seems to be about increasing benefits (not against that) and paying for it with massive efficiency savings, but given that you would still need the admin to determine who is entitled to Housing benefit, (presumably) incapacity benefit, attendance allowance etc - I'm not sure where these efficiency savings would come from.

To have it at a level that covers housing needs would presumably make it prohibitively expensive - and intrinsically unfair - e,g. A pensioner with a house and savings and just the state pension.

I think the idea is it's enough to cover all basic needs and then some more: housing, food, essentials and you then (largely) scrap benefits

Turns out the UK government deliverately triggered a global pandemic while the weather was good:

x.com/mattletiss7/status/1777618329584218338

(Or maybe they improved the weather when the pandemic was triggered?)

Also, wouldn't you prefer the weather to be bad if you wanted everyone to stay indoors?

And it's not like he ever headed the ball, so he's not got that excuse.

Haven’t we all learned since the David Icke days? Why does anybody give too flying fucks about conspiracy theorist footballers?

Clearly they haven’t transitioned well since leaving the game although Icke was doing fine on Television before he went woo woo!

Twats the lot of them.

Chicago: Sending people to Coventry.

Matt Le Tissier is yet another added to the significant list of people who are (or were) both wonderful footballers and sub-optimal human beings.

That said, he sits firmly at the batshit crazy / fairly harmless end of the scale, and is therefore easy enough to ignore.

The news that Tricky has been waiting for