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Latest Lunacy From The Looney Left?

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ToraToraTora | 13:49 Mon 05th Jun 2023 | News
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65806599
....words fail me, discuss.
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Lots of people already enjoy unearned income. If the motivation for opposing Universal Basic Income is based on a principle that all income should be earned, then why not stop the fortunate ones who currently enjoy a life without the need to work?
What utter tripe Atheist. Most, not all, who enjoy unearned income worked very hard to get themselves in that position in the first place.
This is the basis of communism TTT.

Should got down well with a couple of Abers I can think of.

Of course, totally unaffordable and the road to ruin, but you cant tell the hard left that.
I was hoping for better informed opinions, rather than instant indignation.
YMB; there are some people who work very hard for a lifetime and do not make enough money to retire and live off unearned income. There are some people who never work at all, because they were fortunate enough to be born into wealth. I doubt if there are any statistics about the numbers in each of those categories.
Only in England?
Isn't establishing its viability (or lack thereof) kind of the point of a trial, though?

To a certain extent you could reasonably argue that this trial is hardly large enough to assess its flaws, but this wouldn't be the first time it's trialled (1). See the links below. A couple of notable examples: one trial in South Korea, initially confined to a town, was later expanded to the entire province (2); in another example, in the Netherlands, there were found to be "no negative effects", and in fact that participants increased their "participation in the labour market" (3); and, while a trial in Finland has often been seen as unsuccessful, it has been argued that the study was flawed for multiple reasons (4).

It's also a bit much to call it Communist, since the idea predates Communism (and, for that matter, Capitalism) by a few centuries, while the idea was also popular in the extremely anti-Communist US of the 1960s and 1970s.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
(2) http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200811000938
(3) https://www.uu.nl/sites/default/files/uu-use-eindrapport-wetenwatwerkt-summary-en.pdf
(4) https://www.businessinsider.com/finland-basic-income-experiment-reasons-for-failure-2019-12
No, maggie. It is happening in Wales https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-57120354
Still hard left commies no matter how you try to guild it.
Imagine calling Nixon a hard-left Commie :/
Idea has been around for a few years
I thought it had been tried in Iceland ( not really a shiny example of financial probity)
and I thought had been abandoned.

sozza, oops this is AB - fang me dinger, fing fang goolie, me old chine!
there, that is much clearer
Just been reading about new drops for boggle-eyedness.

Spooky.
Imagine calling Nixon a hard-left Commie//

Nixon was useless.

It is a commie idea no matter who says it and no matter how long it has been around.

You can post all the smart alec posts you like but in this daya and age that is what it boils down to.

Or are you suggesting its a right wing idea?
i think the question of whether or not it works is more important than whether or not it is left wing

i have not read much about UBI so i welcome the trial and will be interested to see the results
I'm suggesting that it's an idea that ought not to be dismissed as "commie", as if that's somehow enough to end the discussion as to its merits.

I pointed to multiple trials that suggest benefits, and the links also send you to several more. I don't think, by the way, that those trials are in some sense definitive proof that UBI works, and that we should therefore adopt it nationwide without delay, but you can't have a discussion of what works and what doesn't if it's reduced to labelling an idea as "commie", or "lunacy", or whatever other dismissive adjective you'd care to come up with.
Unworkable and unaffordable. Ridiculous notion.
I get the feeling that a lot of people say that it's unworkable/unaffordable based on no evidence other than, perhaps, some intuition about how things *should* work. But it's vital to test those intuitions in practice, because many end up being some degree of wrong.

It's true that the initial cost projected over the whole country would be large, with the exact cost depending somewhat on how you target it, but it's not true that you get none of this money back. For example, when you give less well-off people money, they tend to spend it -- on food, holidays, basic healthcare, technology items etc. That means that the money is, mostly, doing something useful. In that sense, this can be equally seen as a large investment, and you could expect in the long run to make much of this back and then some. And, besides, you have to compare the cost to the present system, which itself is expensive, and it's not difficult to find claims that in fact you'd make savings in the long run compared to that.

Anyway, the exact cost depends on how you organise the scheme (obviously), so writing it off as unaffordable without seeing the details *or* without any trial seems premature.

A few more links:

https://ralphbuncheinstitute.org/2021/03/where-is-the-ubi-movement-at-right-now-with-karl-widerquist/

https://web.archive.org/web/20220105225751/https://www.zeit.de/zustimmung?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de%2Fwirtschaft%2F2017-02%2Fthomas-straubhaar-buch-bedingungsloses-grundeinkommen-auszug (in German)
But you’re not giving it sorely too ‘less well off people’. Unless I’m misunderstanding this you’re also giving it to people who don’t need it.
thank you for your links claire

i find the case for a UBI persuasive in principal but I do worry a lot about it being inflationary... if we get runaway inflation then the money provided can quickly lose value at least in theory.

i am pleased that a trial is being conducted in the UK and await the findings with great interest.
Why are we giving £303 a day to the doddery old goats in the house of instead of helping those in dire need.
i think the elimination of means testing which is expensive to enforce is one of the reasons UBI advocates like it... in principal it would allow you to do away with existing welfare schemes entirely

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