I disagree with this. There’s a labor shortage in just about every industry right now, we aren’t in a high unemployment world by any stretch. UBI is not needed when wages are high and unemployment is low.
As much as people are going to fight it, UBI is pretty much the only way to maintain a somewhat functioning society when every low-wage job has disappeared. The people that were doing those jobs before haven't gone anywhere. And there will likely be even more of them. But now any opportunity for work that they had before is no longer available.
Unpopular opinion I know, but instead of UBI, I would rather see the state create fulfilling jobs for unemployed or underemployed. Many people need meaning, purpose, and the need to feel productive. UBI doesn't address any of that.
UBI is a must as long as printing your own money is illegal. I mean having your own currency. If you are forced to participate in an unique economy, then that economy is responsible to give everybody a job and an income. If there are not enough jobs, then you just have the income anyway.
UBI is a solution to the problem of structural unemployment when due to advances in automation we don't have enough reasonable jobs for people who are capable of working, when we don't really want everyone to work as much.
If we need everyone who can work to actually work, if we want to force people to work with a threat that if they don't contribute to society then they'll be (for example) homeless - well, then we don't (yet) need UBI and should not implement UBI until(if) we get the problem which UBI would fix.
That's a pretty terrible reason for UBI imo. If UBI is built to offset the lack of jobs, more people will choose not to work. If people choose not to work, the price of labor will go up. If the price of labor goes up, more and more labor will be outsourced to countries without UBI. It will create an underclass of non-citizens who don't get the luxury of UBI but live in an economy built for people who do.
UBI can't solve this problem. UBI does absolutely nothing if there's nothing to buy because nobody is working. You can't UBI your way around meat plants closing, restaurants not being staffed, stores closing, and so on.
If anything, UBI encouraging more people to not work can only make it worse.
The whole premise of UBI is that there's such a surplus that the only sane thing to do with it is to distribute it. There is now no surplus, and indeed credible threats of shortages. Therefore, it is only logical that the rest of the argument is now invalid. Hopefully, only temporarily.
UBI is a tool for dealing with rising inequality and economic insecurity, not a solution on its own.
People will be incentivized to work despite UBI because they still want better things, and will work to pay for things that provide social signalling value.
A UBI shouldn't be designed to try to cover all desires and eliminate all reason to work, but rather should be tailored to give people more flexibility in choosing jobs and locations.
Even Andrew Yang's $1k/mo/adult proposal will not allow anyone to live very well in even the low COL areas of the US. But it might help them not to lose their roof or car while unemployed.
This is analogous to how universal healthcare will never cover cosmetic procedures, but that's ok because it will cover your healthcare even if you end up unemployed.
This is a persistent and pernicious misconception. UBI is intended to increase people's autonomy, but manly by eliminating the poverty trap. Too many people live off benefits they would lose if they took a low paying no job, so are better off or only marginally worse off not working. UBI takes that problem away to that everyone would always be substantially better off working. It would act as a major subsidy for low paying jobs by ensuring even quite low pay would represent a major improvement in marginal income, thus making it cheaper to hire unskilled labour and increasing the number and variety of jobs. It's not intended that a significant number of people would only rely on their UBI.
I don't follow the UBI thing at all. If anything, this illustrates that we should have UBI or try and reduce the amount of folks working in bullshit jobs somehow.
It's not the purpose of UBI to get EVERYONE to work.
The purpose is to get as many as possible to work and not have to deal with controlling who "deserves" what, who cheats etc.
It's totally fine that some people don't work as long as the majority of people will.
In many ways we already have a form of BI today, it's just conditional and have the negative effect of branding people, keeping them in their social status.
Yes, everyone should get produce. We have the resources to make that happen.
Automation is inevitable, hence why UBI is necessary. UBI also doesn't mean that people can't get paid for work. It just means they don't die if they don't have a job.
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