As much as I am convinced we will need UBI in our automated future, statements like yours are way too optimistic on the financials.
Let’s see if we can get healthcare, education, school meals, food stamps and social security funded first.
After that we can start funding generous unemployment benefits to handle the first waves of unemployment due to automation.
And as the automation keeps gobbling up jobs, we can fund schemes for reschooling, early retirement, increase paid parental leave, increase paid vacation, promote part time work (e.g. working 4 days for 100% pay).
Once the totality of all these schemes costs the same as UBI, we can simplify it all be replacing the schemes with UBI.
I strongly prefer UBI to conditional programs that have overhead. I get that politics needs to keep us miserable and promise conditional bandaids to a constituency to maximize their power, and the crab mentality that something is promised “just for them” as politics as its always been, but that doesn’t seem to be winning, and oligarchist policies are much better funded and mediasplained.
I agree, but the best way to achieve that is to remove the conditional aspects IMHO.
Social security is already unconditional, you just have to reach the age, and it is the standard IMHO of what can easily morph into UBI by lowering and eventually abolishing the age threshold.
If everyone can get Medicare for free, then it’s just as universal and the means checks can be scrapped.
Same for education, if it’s free, the means checks can be scrapped. Although, in a globalized world, I think higher ed should be debt based, but the debt just gets cancelled after 10-20 years of remaining in country. Otherwise, you indirectly subsidize other countries.
As much as I am convinced we will need UBI in our automated future, statements like yours are way too optimistic on the financials.
Let’s see if we can get healthcare, education, school meals, food stamps and social security funded first.
After that we can start funding generous unemployment benefits to handle the first waves of unemployment due to automation.
And as the automation keeps gobbling up jobs, we can fund schemes for reschooling, early retirement, increase paid parental leave, increase paid vacation, promote part time work (e.g. working 4 days for 100% pay).
Once the totality of all these schemes costs the same as UBI, we can simplify it all be replacing the schemes with UBI.
was commenting on possible tax reforms.
I strongly prefer UBI to conditional programs that have overhead. I get that politics needs to keep us miserable and promise conditional bandaids to a constituency to maximize their power, and the crab mentality that something is promised “just for them” as politics as its always been, but that doesn’t seem to be winning, and oligarchist policies are much better funded and mediasplained.
I agree, but the best way to achieve that is to remove the conditional aspects IMHO.
Social security is already unconditional, you just have to reach the age, and it is the standard IMHO of what can easily morph into UBI by lowering and eventually abolishing the age threshold.
If everyone can get Medicare for free, then it’s just as universal and the means checks can be scrapped.
Same for education, if it’s free, the means checks can be scrapped. Although, in a globalized world, I think higher ed should be debt based, but the debt just gets cancelled after 10-20 years of remaining in country. Otherwise, you indirectly subsidize other countries.