[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by GGG

I don’t think I have said or implied that anywhere.

You may not have said it per se, but it's a prevalent attitude that tends to be present in people who are against UBI.

In fact my fear is the opposite that too much skilled labour leaves the economy so we are unable to support basic systems.

Again going back to the motivation video I posted earlier... based on your feedback on the video, it seems like you ignored the bulk of what was actually said in it. It explicitly said that money is a tremendous motivator for grunt-work jobs; jobs that are physically demanding. This means jobs like construction, farm work, power plants, water treatment plants, etc. Make these jobs well paying (emphasis on well paying), and people will work them. As for the skilled trades, they are a mixture of menial and non-menial work, so money is still a strong motivator for those tasks as well.

Another key take away from the video that you seem to have missed, is the fact that people are driven by purpose. People aren't just going to constantly sit at home and tinker, when they could collaborate with others to achieve greater things and contribute to society in a more meaningful way.

All UBI does is redistribute wealth by a modest amount.

There's nothing modest about it. It would be a game changer in terms of giving people the power to say no to any situation where they feel they are being exploited.

UBI does absolutely nothing to address the problem you define above. Giving everyone 20k per year to spend how they want to doesn’t change the material nature of society.

It would cause a shift in society's focus from its current rampant consumerism, exploitation of one another, and destruction of the planet, to a healthy balance between consumerism and modesty.

Originally Posted by Ark2

Wages are dictated by supply and demand. The skillset that an accountant has is more rare and in higher demand than that of a janitor, hence the reason that the accountant is paid more. Paying someone more because you feel the job is undesirable despite the fact that it is a low skill position that is not highly in demand seems quite odd to me. It also leads me to think that you do not understand how markets work.

Wages are dictated by supply and demand. Rarity of skillset is a factor, but it's not the only factor. The supply of workers willing to work low-paying jobs is artificially high when people are looking at starvation as the alternative. Introduce a UBI, and the supply of people willing to work for such low pay suddenly shrinks, and you have to increase the pay to bring them back.