Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathgod
It is a benefit to society that you are doing these things. You replacing your car breaks and garage roof means that you aren't paying someone else to do it for you, so you've saved society from doing that work. Likewise, your active lifestyle makes it far less likely that you'll find yourself in a clinic or a hospital bed any time soon, and/or needing prescription drugs.
Well, that's just it. On the one hand, UBI acts as a stimulus and may lead to increased consumption for some. But on the other hand, taxes and inflation will lead to reduced non-essential consumption across the board.
Are you going to tell a 50 year old truck driver who just lost his job to a self-driving truck, that he has to quickly transition to a highly-skilled, technical job?
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But it’s not a benefit to society. If I pay an expert to get the roof done and brakes changed and instead due my job that I am an expert in to generate wealth then society has more wealth. That wealth can then be taxed and redistributed for the benefit of society. Overall experts doing things they are experts in increases societies wealth.
You didn’t answer the question about human behaviour. Why does 20k a year change people’s desire to consume as much as possible. You don’t need UBI to change taxation regimes to discourage consumption and to clean up the nature of consumption.
What you seem to be advocating for is to heavily tax consumption and non-clean power which has the result of making everything more expensive which in turn reduces consumption. This is fine and an interesting conversation. It is in no way tied to a UBI and in this kind of environment where you are making energy cost more human labour you need more work hours not less to maintain the same standard of living. So your welfare regime should be encouraging labour participation.