[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by New Era

The Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

Ah. Ok. So this is your response any time someone suggests that the authorities might not have all the answers. K cool.

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.

Those things benefit society more than if you stayed on the couch, was my point.

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.

I think a lot of our fanatical obsession with amassing material wealth and living high-consumption lifestyles comes from a feeling that something terrible will happen if we don't do so. We fear that we'll be seen as less than, and that our well being and even our survival will be threatened. Let's show people that they're survival isn't threatened, and that we have each other's backs, and we'll see if most people still have a frantic obsession with consuming as much as possible.

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.

Not really sure what you're getting at here.

The entire experience has left me extremely jaded with the average work force.

So you feel that you should have easy, abundant access to low cost labour.

My question is, should this really be a priority for our society?