Re:/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrifi...
by dragonwriter on Monday February 07, 2022 @12:52PM
(#30248375)
> How does UBI work if everyone just decided not to work anymore?
If too many (which with any reasonable near-future level of productive capacity, and any level of UBI, is a lot short of “everyone”) people don't work with fixed nominal or dedicated-revenue-stream-based UBI, inflation erodes the value of UBI decreasing the lifestyle sustainable on UBI alone until enough fewer people opt out of work to stabilize things.
With inflation-indexed UBI you get a positive feedback UBI -> price feedback loop, so don't do UBI that way.
But mostly “what happens if too many people don’t work” is irrelevant to real-world UBI proposals: these tend to target a poverty-level income, replace existing means-tested poverty-support programs, and remove barriers to outside income that come with existing means-tested programs.
As such, they structurally incentivize more people choosing to work than under the status quo system (and a move from under-the-table to above-board work.)
If too many (which with any reasonable near-future level of productive capacity, and any level of UBI, is a lot short of “everyone”) people don't work with fixed nominal or dedicated-revenue-stream-based UBI, inflation erodes the value of UBI decreasing the lifestyle sustainable on UBI alone until enough fewer people opt out of work to stabilize things.
With inflation-indexed UBI you get a positive feedback UBI -> price feedback loop, so don't do UBI that way.
But mostly “what happens if too many people don’t work” is irrelevant to real-world UBI proposals: these tend to target a poverty-level income, replace existing means-tested poverty-support programs, and remove barriers to outside income that come with existing means-tested programs.
As such, they structurally incentivize more people choosing to work than under the status quo system (and a move from under-the-table to above-board work.)