[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

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.

Schools out!

For someone who doesn't like ad hominems you sure do like to drop them. Anybody who is "against UBI," which means anyone who questions whether it would work, is labelled some type if misanthrope or miscreant who clearly doesn't like all people.

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.

Which mean you are not allowing for the market to regulate what those jobs can pay. You are artificially inflating the market for those jobs, which in turn will inflate the market for jobs in the related industry and start a domino effect. To add to this inflationary mechanism you are then forcing the service provider to up their costs, which then go on to the consumer to pay for. Inflation is a real problem with this model.

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.

People are motivated by two drivers. Extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic (external) motivators have a greater level of decay and do not act as a long term motivator. Intrinsic (internal) motivators are a much better driver, but linked more to our emotional health and subject to our mood. Hence the discussion of depression and the possible effects on this system. But you dismissed that because, science. You don't know anything about it, so to you it has no relevance nor validity to any discussion you want to have.

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.

No, it wouldn't. People will still have obligations and responsibilities they will have to live up to. People will still have to deal with the same challenges of searching for another job before moving on to another. That's the thing about being an adult, it normally comes with responsibilities in the shape of commitments, relationships, and responsibilities that you still have to maintain regardless of whether your boss treats you like crap.

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.

Your idealism is showing. Human nature is not going to change just because you give someone some money. There are decades of research available on UBI experiments, if you care to look at them. Feel free to look at the First Nations/American Indian reservations for a longitudinal example of what a basic income payment can do to/for communities. There is some stark data there to look at. A mortgage payment is not going to make people shift from "rampant consumerism, exploitation of one another, and destruction of the planet, to a healthy balance between consumerism and modesty." As I've said all along, you need to change every system we have in place (economic, political, social, etc.) for UBI to work. The hardest part will be re-wiring every man, woman, and child on this planet.

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.

And so the inflationary cycle kicks in.