/liberty/ - Liberty

>>85961

Universal conscription was invented shortly after France turned into a democracy. If every citizen is a member of one big fraternal group, then you can demand from every citizen to fight and die for his "family".

I can easily imagine that the state will demand mandatory work from its citizens once each and everyone is on its payroll. That is my main qualm with UBI.

Also, the fact that this will never hold:

>I don't believe it's appreciated how much a plausible UBI would actually total. It would most likely be just enough to stop a person from dying of starvation or exposure from not holding down a full-time job.

If it's that low, it will not eliminate the need for welfare. What's sufficient for a student of twenty to survive is a slap in the face for a fifty year old suffering from a chronic illness, or a single mother raising two autistic children. Not because they really have a claim to the money, but because you advertised UBI as a real alternative to welfare. You didn't challenge the principle that everyone should feed everyone else, and then of course those really in need of help will call you out on it.

How to alleviate their plight? You can hardly tell them to fuck off, because you still pay lipservice to the welfare state. Whoever promises those people extra benefits, then, will be the champion of the people. My bet is the old bureaucracy would largely remain in place, everyone would get UBI and many others would get extra benefits, so you'd have the welfare state and UBI to deal with. Abolishing UBI will be next to impossible, because everyone will have a stake in it.

>The incentive to work would still exist for anybody who wanted anything approaching the luxuries and met wants of modern developed nation society

That is already the case now. Being a welfare recipient is not a fulfilling existence. You get enough money to live a somewhat comfortable life, and you don't have to do any work besides filing some forms and applying to shit-tier jobs. However, you also cannot send your kids to fancy schools, you live in a bad neighborhood, you cannot afford hobbies that are all too expensive, you cannot decide to go on a world tour, and so on. Looking at it like that, there should be plenty of reasons for welfare recipients to go find a job, but still, many don't. It will be better with UBI, as you won't have to work fourty hours at a terrible job for an extra one-hundred dollars in your purse, but not quite for the reason you mentioned.

>>85961

>alternative to the present welfare state

In the present? What is going to stop everything, from phones to milk adjusting in price to completely fucking negate the added money in the pocket of UBI? Price controls are a pandora's box that has no good ending.

The closest thing I've seen to UBI being advocated amongst libertarians is the negative income tax.

UBI sounds like welfare on steroids. How about we don't implement it, and while we're at it abolish regular welfare. All the niggers will get jobs or die. All the charity cases will find actual charity or die. It will be ugly at first but once thay transition period is over we'll have a cleaner, more functional society.

>>86065

Also, this makes me wonder, what do you guys think about people being paid oil and gas revenues like they do in some resource-rich countries? Isn't that also a form of UBI?

>>86079

At least this is a better proposition since the resources have protection against inflation compared to fiat.

What are the advantages of negative income tax over UBI?

>>86079

Yes, that's commonly cited as one way to do it.

>>86086

>more welfare

Not what I'm saying. Please read

>it's not like welfare at all, it's welfare on chemo

That statement makes sense at face-value and without irony even if your green text is meant to ridicule it.

>my disbursion of welfare is actually the opposite somehow

Again, not what I said. Just that it's a better way of handling things than the bloated and corruptible system at present.

It doesn't matter what you and your tulpa fantasize about at this point, we are not getting rid of the welfare state and entitlement programs. Ever. The first world is not going back to a time before public assistance in health care, unemployment, and the like. It's just not happening. You need to accept that and be willing to work to keep the system from getting even worse or reforming it into something better, but short of THE HAPPENING or politicians actually sitting on their hands and ignoring AARP lobbyists, stuff like social security is here to stay.

>>86089

The differences are mostly procedural. With NIT higher brackets are taxed more to pay for money that goes to lower brackets. With UBI everyone gets a check but the dollar value of it is wiped out by taxation after a certain bracket. In the end, people have the same amount of money but the procedure may be more or less palatable in politics.

This (http://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different) seems to be a good quick and dirty walk through.

>>86099

>as opposed to giving out entitlement for extenuating circumstances I want to give out welfare just for being alive

>totally better than welfare you guys!!

>because we're giving money to everyone not just some people!

The welfare state can and will be abolished soon after the rest of you boomers die out.

>>86100

>as opposed to giving out entitlement for extenuating circumstances I want to give out welfare just for being alive

Yes. The present system that's meant to be temporary and conditional isn't working. What Charles Murray, for example, has written about would be more sustainable.

>totally better than welfare you guys!!

>because we're giving money to everyone not just some people!

Exactly the case, anon, thank you for understanding.

>The welfare state can and will be abolished soon after the rest of you boomers die out

1.) No it won't. The upcoming generation by and large does not hate the idea of the welfare state. For every Trump supporter and young libertarian there are 3 soy cucks. They are mostly angry because they don't think it will be there to serve them and become bankrupted despite their mandatory pay in to the system rather than not believing they should exist. They're cynical about the survival of these programs but they still either want them to exist or want something even more socialized like a single-payer healthcare system. You are not going to get a mandate for repealing welfare just because the present crop of oldsters expires. It's not a winning proposition in a 1st world country and it never will be without some devastation to hit the reset button and get that generation accustomed to doing without. This is the real world you have to learn to deal with.

2.) Boomers aren't the age cohort supporting UBI. I can't imagine how out of touch and insulated on the internet you'd have to be to think so or that my interest in the idea would make me one. Boomers are more likely, in fact, to have knee-jerk "HURF DERR SOCIALISM!!!" reactions and bitch about Millienials wanting money for nothing while hypocritically depending on social security and medicare.

>>86104

>boomers hate social programs

They implemented almost all of them that we suffer under and continue to benefit from the largest and most overreaching (social security). The welfare state will collapse, if not out of pure unsustainability, then when the fucking war starts, and if you think we're not careening towards a civil war then that's just willful ignorance. Social programs never work. They exacerbate economic disparity and accelerate collapse. You havent reasoned how free gibs can inspire people to work, and never will.

>>86079

>oil price goes down

>Venezuela.jpg

>>86144

Denmark and other socialist paradises can afford universal programs because they have a small population coupled with an abundance of natural resources. Specifically in the Scandanavian region that resource is natural gas. When that gas runs out, that country will undergo recession, and if they dont act quickly, depression and then collapse. Paying everyone money just for being alive makes no sense. It won't improve quality of life for anyone, same as raising minimum wage only raised cost of living. All that will happen is now slimey beurocrats will be able to take a cut of the funds as "administration fees" before sending the money back to the people they got it from. There's zero point for implementing UBI, the welfare state has been and will continue to weaken the American economy. Eventually, there will be a war or a collapse. It's unsustainable. You can only print money so many times. Now keel over and die you old boomer.

>>86151

They're slipping already, and if it wasn't for the US subsidizing their national defense they'd be slipping even faster.

>>86151

>Denmark and other socialist paradises

Denmark and Hong Kong are not socialist nations. Their economies are less planned and controlled by public organs than almost every other country on Earth. Taxes and social programs do not automatically make a nation socialist or the term would be meaningless as every country would be socialist. The other nations you're lumping in, while perhaps not as free by a quantitative metric as the USA, are also freer than the majority of nations in the world.

That these countries have small populations and natural resources to exploit does not support your argument that social programs do not ever work, exacerbate disparity, or accelerate collapse. You have only identified requisite conditions under which they can be made to work and moved the goalpost from them not working at all to them being conditional, which can be said of just about any policy.

>Paying everyone money just for being alive makes no sense

Why not? Have you bothered reading up the reasons offered by people supporting one form or another of UBI or have you just decided "they want gibs" and washed your hands of it? Allowing people to pursue work or training that's fulfilling and makes use of their talents instead of needing to engage in some pointless make-work to live is one advantage. Supporting people who need to reinvest in themselves when automation outstrips the ability of people to occupy new niches quickly enough is another. Reforming present welfare state inefficiency, bureaucratic bloat, and corruption are another.

>It won't improve quality of life for anyone

How so?

>raising minimum wage only raised cost of living

By a tiny percentage and one that is counterbalanced by increased demand as the economy scales. The minimum wage has its problems, such as closing out job opportunities to labor that could have been sold for cheap, as it is a form of price control, but that's not an important one.

>All that will happen is now slimey beurocrats will be able to take a cut of the funds as "administration fees" before sending the money back to the people they got it from

This is the problem with welfare right now that having an unconditional payout reduces. The amount of administrative overhead required compared to some means-tested and regimented system is negligible.

>There's zero point for implementing UBI, the welfare state has been and will continue to weaken the American economy

The big point in favor of UBI is to ameliorate what the welfare state does to the American economy. I'm not advocating a UBI plus the status-quo.

>Eventually, there will be a war or a collapse. It's unsustainable. You can only print money so many times

I remember when WWIII was supposed to start last month because missiles were launched into Syria. If an act of aggression on dubious pretenses won't set the planet on fire, what you're talking about isn't either.

>Now keel over and die you old boomer.

Why do you keep rehashing this tired pejorative as if it's this cutting end all be all dismissal? At this point I think I only sound like a boomer because I'm talking to a Gen-Z newfag, and not a neurotypical one at that.

>>86171

A video with information supporting an argument? Even if it's Molymeme, it's a damn sight better than most other replies.

>>86216

I don't care what you consider to be unchangable. I don't care that you're willing to bow to the state and bend over to the mob. I don't care that you consider real change to be beyond reach. That doesnt make your hairbrained shit-scheme right or proper. It's just a waste of money like every other program or initiative implemented in the last 100 years. You say Malthus has been debunked (I say we're experiencing the catastrophes he described even today), but welfare and all its descendants have been debunked as well. If it ameliorated poverty, it would have done so years ago. That, and charity, and everything else. But as a matter of fact, here we are. And now you want to expand a program that has had centuries to show results, in perhaps the most socialist way possible, since the only way to not let the amount of money taxed to pay for UBI to equal slightly less than the amount of money paid out as UBI, is to disproportionately tax the wealthy (punish success) and give to the poor. To seize and redistribute wealth, as it were. And you tell me you're not a socialist.

Okay guys, imagine this:

We get rid of Social Security, SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, and all other forms of welfare in the US, and replace them with UBI (set around 80% FPL) and a single-payer healthcare system, and then we replace all existing taxes with a single flat tax on income (apart from UBI) and capital gains of around 20%.

This will represent a tax cut to >95% of Americans, it will prevent the "welfare trap" of means-tested welfare systems incentivizing people to not work, it will encourage people to work for themselves in small businesses and cottage industries, and it will allow people to actually parent their children instead of outsourcing that job to public schools and daycare.

What it will NOT do is:

>Cause inflation

Money is not being printed to pay for it; my numbers actually result in a budget surplus even counting all of the extraneous spending on national defense, public works, education, etc, that the federal government should be leaving to the people, or at least to the States.

>Cause people to not work

This is actually the same argument that was used against ending slavery and feudal serfdom, neither of which resulted in reduced production when they were finally ended.

>Increase rates of drug abuse

The opioid epidemic is primarily a result of the way private insurance works in the US, cannabis use is not correlated poverty or income in any way, and even alcohol and tobacco use is more strongly correlated with working shitty jobs (something that would be reduced with UBI) than with being poor.

>>86255

But working for wages redistributes wealth. Making a trade in which one party benefits more than another redistributes wealth. Hell, time itself redistributes wealth as some products become more valuable and others less. You can't create a society in which wealth redistribution doesn't exist without somehow creating one in which wealth doesn't exist. The actual question you should be asking instead of "is this socialism?" or "does this policy redistribute wealth?" Is "will this result in a net benefit to society?"

The answer to that question for everything the government currently spends money on is a resounding No. What the government should be spending all of its money on are the things that the government can do better than the people themselves. And the one thing the government can do better than individuals is to make sure that everyone has a minimum level of resources necessary to survive that isn't tied to a particular set of circumstances. Beyond that, it's up to individuals to make their own fortunes.

>>86228

I get where you're coming from, but

>What it will NOT do is: Cause People to not work

>…

>even alcohol and tobacco use is more strongly correlated with working shitty jobs (something that would be reduced with UBI)

You can't reconcile these two positions in this way. Consider augmenting your idea with robotics subsidies (using the budget surplus?) and unleashing automation by cutting out regulatory barriers, as increased/automated productivity will mean less shitty jobs and much higher pay, or better benefits & work conditions, for the few that remain by absolute necessity.

>>86274

It converts wealth from time to money, but at the same time some of that wealth is siphoned off by people who have invested no time. That's why I specified working for wages and not working for oneself. If for every hour of your labor, you are paid back for 55 minutes of your labor, that is wealth redistribution.

The thing is, wealth redistribution isn't actually a bad thing, not even when it goes from poor to rich. It's not a good thing either; it's just a thing that happens. Something everyone would do well to keep in mind, though, is that ones inequality passes a certain point, the displaced middle class will rise up with the proles behind them and overthrow the aristocracy (and then become the new aristocracy usually). That's not a bad thing or a good thing either. I'm just pointing out that it's a thing that happens time and again throughout history, and something that the wealthy might want to consider since being gutted by an angry mob and then having all of your wealth redistributed is a worse outcome than having a tiny portion of it spread around without the mob.

>>86275

It's pretty easy to reconcile them when you consider that people working for themselves are still working. How is a woman working at a Taco Bell to pay a babysitter different from the babysitter working at the Taco Bell while the woman stays at home to take care of her children? Either way, the tacos are being made and the kids are being cared for. Why would you consider one situation to represent 100% employment but the other to represent 50% unemployment?

What would happen with UBI is that you'd have a substantial number of people, maybe 15-20%, stop working for wages and start working for themselves, whether that's as homemakers, scholars, volunteers for charity, working in cottage industries like making trinkets to sell on Etsy, etc. This will solve the labor glut caused when the workforce doubled over the span of 30 years. You know how boomers are always saying "you kids these days just have no work ethic! I bought a brand new Camaro off the lot in 1968 with money I made mowing lawns"? That's because demand for labor was roughly the same back then, but supply was much lower. Thus, the price of labor was much greater and it was entirely possible to raise a family on a single income. Then women joined the workforce in vast numbers, which brought the price of labor crashing down.

All UBI will do to employment numbers is bring them back to where they were historically. You wouldn't say that there was 50% unemployment in the 60s because women weren't working, would you? UBI just does the same thing without the "women's place is in the kitchen" paradigm (which is a genie that is not going back into its bottle).

>>86306

Unemployment numbers already discount people who are self employed/not looking for a job. Free money won't fix that since that was never a factor.

>>86312

I never said they didn't. What I said was that "but no one will work if you don't threaten then with starvation!" is a red herring because the workforce currently represents a greater portion of the population than it has at any point in history. In this sense it's not an untried experiment but a return to the way things have been for practically all of recorded history. It's totally acceptable for some people to leave the workforce; it won't actually result in a reduction in national output because those people will continue to work despite not being employed.

>>86320

To rephrase this in a way that more directly addresses your original point, my claim that it won't cause people not to work is not the same as a claim that it won't cause people to leave the workforce. Plus, even within the workforce, the individual bargaining power granted by an assured income will allow people to pass up jobs with truly awful workplace conditions, forcing businesses to compete in providing a tolerable or even enjoyable work environment. You'll also see people leaving dull and alienating office jobs in favor of more rewarding production and service jobs. How many people would make great teachers but go into other fields for the money? At the same time, how many teachers are just career students who realize that they need to get a job but don't know anything other than academia? Wouldn't we be better off with a system where the former can follow their dreams and the latter can take some time to figure out what they actually want to do with their lives?

>>86326

Just cause these fags wanna be home makers and house wives and have sewing circles and crap, why should everyone else have to pay for them to do that? If they can't support themselves while doing it, that's nobody else's problem. I'm not paying housewives to do their husband's laundry. That's the hisband's responsibility, if any.

>>86330

>why should we support families???

Because every disease you hate about modernity is the result of not supporting families. Continue endorsing single mothers while pretending it doesn't lead to autism in every corner of the species. Or maybe you'll bitch about the gay pride parade this month without addressing the underlying cause.

No support for families = decaying society. Deal with it, suck it up, or cry harder.

>>86333

I'm actually gay and don't give two shits for the nuclear family. You wanna toss money at some other man's wife? Be my guest. Nobody else needs to be a part of it.

>>86333

Sociaty can go fuck itself. All the government needs to do is enforce basic safety regulations and property rights. Anything more is either someone else forcing their values on me, or needless complexity that worthless fuckfaces can take advantage of

>>87823

Nobody argued in favor of military conscription and we're discussing UBI as a possible means of controlling taxation and spending. UBI is no more a settled matter in libertarian circles over what is or isn't libertarian than intellectual property.

>>86428

>I'm queer myself

Opinions discarded, drama queen. Also, great use of "LOL" "LARP" and "btw" you subhuman. I'm not surprised you've compared sage to downvoting since you're obviously a redditor. Go back, you belong there and not here.