Here is the News.

People on holiday here? People working overseas for six months? People working here for two years? People who’ve just arrived from France on a dinghy? People with houses in France who fly back every other weekend? 16 year olds? 5 year olds?

Double post

Will UBI come with a London uplift?

Painters who think “fuck this, it’s fucking 5 bastard am and it’s cold”?

I’m on early shift this week…

I'm going to address this all when I'm not on my phone, so tomorrow. Or maybe noodle will take the overnight shift and do a far better job of it than me. But in the meantime, try and take your "I'm a small business owner and this sounds like communism" hat off for a minute, and approach it with an open mind.

Or if you can't wait for that and you feel it may merit, y'know, someone better equipped than yer man there, spend 15 minutes listening to Rutger. Not an endorsement, but he knows his onions.

Why would there be price rises? Essentials will be in no more demand, what with them being essentials, and the cost dynamics of production are a really interesting case because labour is both more and less expensive.

Again, I'm not doing it on my phone because it's a PITA and I'm working, but this isn't just a theory. As Mangetout says, it has been tested and it works. We actually had a trial going here in Ontario and it was pretty successful, then the Conservatives got into power and shut it down right quick. Can't have people not spending every waking hour fighting poverty.

There's a Canadian case study which is often cited, and the idea is its funded through negative income tax. So if you fall below the UBI level, you get topped up. Which means most people don't work less because of it, or spend more, it just means you eliminate poverty and poverty is expensive because it correlates positivelt with public expenditure on health, crime, social care and so on. Rutger Bregman suggested 6 years ago it would cost $150bn to implement in the US as compared to a cost of $500bn caused by the number of people below a certain poverty line, with that line eliminated if you had UBI introduced via negative income taxation.

On the inflation point, we need to brace ourselves for a world where massive massive deflation brought about by tech could be a big problem in the fairly near future.

I'm not quite sold on UBI personally but it is a serious idea, counterintuitive though it first seems.

Mainly it’s not about going out and finding a bunch of new money to give to people.. it’s about rearranging the money that is already swirling around.

So, for example, ordinary working people get a UBI.. but they don’t get any more money. You scrap the personal allowance for tax (because you don’t need it) and tweak rates/thresholds so that people are no better or worse off, financially… but they are better off overall because they have a bit more bargaining power and security knowing that they don’t have the dole, as it exists, as their fallback.

There are big savings to be made by cutting the costs of the current system.. you can aim to get rid of every ‘benefit’, means tested or otherwise, that goes to ordinary folk capable of work. You can get rid of all the bullshit costs of programs that claim they’re helping people get back to work (spoiler: they don’t). I don’t know how big a dent that makes (and it puts people out of work, so that’s a factor) but it’s not nothing.

Old people currently get the pension, so thy basically get UBI already. I’d shutter all public sector pensions, so that’ll save some cost down the line. There might also be some scope to cut back on tax relief for private pensions at the top end.. though I’m too long gone to know what the state of play is with all that.

So the ‘new money’ required isn’t anywhere close to what you might think once you note that some direct or indirect form of UBI already exists for most people… just, mainly, done really really inefficiently.

Oh yeah, and also, most people who think UBI is brilliant also think that Land Value Tax is brilliant. Like me. So the absolute dream is that we do this as one giant bastard and introduce a LVT that covers the UBI (with a corresponding-ish reduction in other taxes.. Stamp Duty goes, maybe reduce VAT, reduce income tax). This ideally increase taxes those owning more land/house than the average.. but not make much difference to everyone else.

To answer another question I think I saw… who gets UBI? Every resident adult citizen. With reduced rates for dependent children. I don’t have the answer to what to do about various categories of immigration/residence.. but it does require setting some boundaries that may offend. I can say, for example, that the likes of Russ and I wouldn’t get anything. But my mum, an Irish who’s lived in the UK for 50 years, probably should. There would be classes of migrant who would not be eligible and we have to accept that and ensure that they are not able to be exploited in the economy as a result.

I'm unsure if you are a fan of UBI or just trolling now.

Don't worry about jobs? So noone needs to work? So who serves me in the shop, who makes stuff for me to eat? All those state enployees just give up their well paid jobs and gold plated pensions for some minimum wage equivalent?

I just don't get it. Which I realise makes me dumb and part of the problem, holding back progress to this brave new world. So apologies.

You said I don't need to worry about work so preumably my UBI covers cost of Forest season tickets, rugby tickets, gig tickets, meals out, holidays etc?

Or maybe I do need to worry about work unless I want a shit life?

Unless I’ve got it completely backward, the idea is UBI is a safety net so you don’t have to work to afford somewhere to live or food on the table (or medical treatment if you’re in somewhere like the US). Want somewhere nicer to live? Forest season tickets, etc? That’s where the job comes in.

The shit life is open to personal interpretation.

This is on the edge of one of the most offensive (to me) arguments I hear against UBI.. which is the idea that vast numbers of people will just stop working and take the free money.

It’s offensive because you ask anyone making it if THEY would quit work and spend their life watching telly and scraping through on a subsistence income and they say ‘of course not.. but other people will’.

Most people will still work, as they do now, because they want more than what a UBI income would provide. Those that really don’t want to do that are probably not working now, and better off not working at all. UBI at least affords those people a bit of dignity and freedom to pursue interests without the threat of the state taking away what meagre income they have.

Most people do want to work. They want to contribute something and they want to have money for nice stuff. My piss is boiled by those who think otherwise. I could take a low-wage-don’t-give-a-shit job, or go part time, or maybe even just retire and live a UBI life off my savings and home equity for 20 years until I can get a pension.. but I am not going to do that. Why would I assume large numbers of other people will take the first bus out of work-town when I wouldn’t?

Now.. does UBI mean that some people will need more persuading to work? Yes, yes it does. And that’s a feature, not a bug. If the person who cleans the bogs in Wetherspoons is only doing it because they’ll starve if they don’t.. well that is a bad thing.