Responding to "If you are arguing for a Universal Basic Income, here’s what your opponent believes but will never say"

 So, a fellow UBI supporter named Galen Jones just wrote an article about how he perceives the anti UBI crowd. And given how this has been a topic of interest as of late, I thought I'd try my hand at looking at it and analyzing it. Often times these kinds of articles are snarky, but often have grains of truth. After all, much like the author of this article, I tend to believe a lot of opposition to UBI is based on irrationality and a lot of BS ideas...when the idea if properly understood of course. Of course, given this is "outofplatoscave2012.blogspot.com", I tend to recognize that sometimes people are literally just that ignorant and have a lot of ideological deprogramming to do to be able to get to the truth. With that said, I want to read this article, and react to it as I go.

"Dear UBI proponent:

My deflections, obfuscations, and overall shell-ball-game aren't working, and you've cornered me into what seems like a logically unsupportable position.

So I might as well save us all a lot of time, cut the B.S. and tell you what's going on since you're so pushy and can't take a polite hint:

 Now, to be fair, this is kind of a problem with being in plato's cave so to speak. You leave the cave, and you're so used to the dark, it takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the light. And we UBI supporters and human centered capitalists who challenge peoples' entire preconceptions about the world? MAN, we sure dump a lot on them at once. And sometimes the response to that is to double down and dig in and stick to more comfortable ideas, than to admit that ideas like this can work.

Adjusting your conception of reality can take time. No one debate ever completely flipped my ideas ever. I anchored myself to my initial position and only shifted when enough debates, discussion, and evidence has been gathered that I finally feel comfortable shedding back ideas. It can be a slow process, and it takes a bit of time. The idea of utopianism being bad and the failures of the likes of communism are so ingrained into our culture many people have a worldview where they literally don't believe that utopia is possible, and that we shouldn't even try. I understand that apprehension to some degree, but that's also why I've dedicated so much time to discussing the policy details associated with my ideas. If we want to convince people that these ideas can work, the burden of proof is on us to demonstrate them.

 Of course, after that, people sometimes start falling back into their old worldviews and start relying on other, more subjective ideas. Which is where it becomes frustrating, and that's where I think this author is coming from. SOmetimes, after demolishing one's entire conception of reality and demonstrating that the idea can work on a practical level, people just reject it for more subjective reasons. Sometimes these are just ideological, and based on these old outdated worldviews, and this is the most frustrating part of discussing UBI. I'm not saying there aren't valid arguments against it. But many of them ultimately are based in some other worldview or theory of justice with principles much different from our own. And it is these that people often rely on to make their arguments at this stage of the discussion.

I fully admit that humankind is now past the point when someone's success requires another's suffering.

And yet, I still like knowing that others suffer, have lost, and will continue to lose, and indeed, in many cases, have no prayer of winning – and through no fault of their own.

 Yeah this is kind of the scary thing I've realized. A lot of people, especially the right, which I admit I dont talk about enough on this blog sometimes, but see no reason to because their ideas are so terrible they often don't merit discussion, tend to be so lost that they literally dont believe that the goal of morality is to reduce suffering. I just brushed up on the christian worldview from David Noebel's book, as I am using it to outline my own ideological journey and how I got to UBI and human centered capitalism over time, and yeah, the Christian worldview outright isn't about reducing or eliminating suffering. They just start with this idea that the world is "fallen", that we are sinful and evil, that nothing will ever improve, and we shouldn't even try to make things better. Given my current moral compass, I'd go so far to say that this worldview is screwed up and evil. Yet, the conservative point of view in America at large is based on this general ideology. I've had discussions with conservatives online and many of them LITERALLY do not seem to believe in eliminating suffering, believing things that suffering builds character and that the goal of morality isn't to reduce suffering, but to build up one's character through some nonsense sense of virtue ethics or something. It's extremely screwed up. To me, these people are just so lost, I struggle to even discuss stuff with them. Because even when I largely had the Christian worldview, I still, in some form, believed in reducing suffering to some degree. Even if my worldview was based on some divine code, I ultimately believed that the creator of that code was wiser than I and that they were playing some 9D chess to reach the right result somehow. Of course, that's also why it was so easy for me to leave. After I started realizing that this worldview had some unrepentant cruel elements in it and that they literally didn't care if their ideas were in touch with reality, I ended up just...rejecting their morality outright. When it came down to "Jesus said to love God and to love one another and that's all the commandments came down to", and then I saw people not acting like that in his name, it was like....wtf, no, I'm done. And now I just view these guys' morality as pure evil. 

I am well off, a winner in the game of capitalism. Yet knowing that others have lost and are suffering brings me joy in many facets of life, not least of all, the games of mating and status.

I want to keep it this way, not because society must, but because, well, it feels good.

Let me further admit that obviously I do not value ALL human life intrinsically, and also, that the suffering of certain people simply does not bother me.

Why should I have to relinquish the joy of being one of the relatively lucky ones? Why would I want a world full of happy self-actualized people who can claim to be as comfortable and fulfilled as me? What's in that for me? 

 This is a part of it too. Some of these people are just comfortable, and if suffering isn't happening to them, why should they care? This is actually what caused me to shift, admittedly. Once I realized that yes it can happen to me, and I obviously didn't want that, obviously, I wanted society to change, and I changed my ethics to be more compatible with my new stance on life. And then I went further left of the liberals and devised an entirely new approach to capitalism that they largely left unconsidered. And then they rejected it too, because liberals are kind of stuck in old ideas, and lets face it, the centrists sound...exactly like the above. I've had discussions with these people do. Honestly, those white collar suburbanites aren't our friends. A lot of them are happy and satisfied with their position, they dont want it to change, and they love to lord it over people. Being the pro UBI anti work guy, I've had these kinds of jerks rub it in my face, go on about how little they work, how much status they have, how much money they make, and how much better off they have it than me. And these are LIBERALS. 

Really, I like to say it. A lot of liberals are just economic conservatives who are okay with gay people. They'll go along with all the woke crap because it doesnt affect them and lets them virtue signal, but on economics they believe in all the same BS that the right does. And the right, well, a lot of them are comfortable and love lording their status over others.

All our democracy is, is enough people just kept comfortable enough that they dont want to rock the boat, with the people unhappy kept in the minority enough, and split up in various factions and "caves" so to speak where they can't organize into a viable political coalition. And crap just remains the same, and nothing ever gets better.

These people need to read Rawls. Of course, as we know from Van Parijs...not even Rawls is truly on board with UBI since even he can't get around the reciprocity objection in his worldview. But many social libertarian thinkers like Van Parijs and Widerquist often used Rawls and expand on his ideas like the veil of ignorance, to push for UBI. But many people, including pretty much the entire right, as well as the bourgeois left, literally dont care. They're apathetic enough and comfortable enough they dont wanna rock the boat. And if others suffer, well tough crap, at least it aint me, seems to be their attitude.

Nothing but a lack of the relative dominance that I currently enjoy. Nothing but more competition for mates. Nothing but more people with more free time, working on things they love, living up to their full potential, and making me feel smaller. Why would I want that?

I’d rather keep most people desperate long after we need to. That's why I'm not too fond of your UBI idea. It's not because we can't afford it. You've proven we can.

 Yeah I think that a lot of people really dont wanna give up their positions. Remember Van Parijs and his "lazies vs crazies?" Crazies run society, they're happy with it the way it is,a nd they keep the rest of us subjected to it because it gives them the benefit of being superior somehow. I noticed it during covid. All of these middle class jerks going around screaming no one wants to work any more because people werent literally doing menial minimum wage work SERVING THEM. Seriously. That's what much of the luxury economy is these days. A bunch of powerless minimum wage workers being forced to serve a bunch of karens. And the karens so to speak run the world. 

It's not even that we can't make the world revolve around different principles. We can. But these pampered people love the fact that other people serve them and they must look down their noses at them.

It's not because it'll make people lazy and thwart innovation. On the contrary, you've proven it won't.

It's not because businesses will raise prices, making UBI a wash. On the contrary, you've proven the opposite will happen.

 To be fair, I think the laziness and inflation objections are deeply rooted in our psyche. A lot of people just have this idea that it will happen, and even if you convince them they wont, they'll just ignore them and keep pushing fallacious ideas because it contradicts their ideology and causes cognitive dissonance.

To be fair I acknowledge UBI might cause SOME work disincentive and inflation, but it's really all relative and whether it's "too much" for society to bear without negative consequences.

It's not because it will trap people in the lower class. On the contrary, you've proven it's far superior to the current system concerning motivation, goal attainment and upward mobility.

It's not because the payout is too small to make a difference. On the contrary, you've proven it's enough to open up a world of opportunities for millions of marginalized wage-slaves.

 Honestly, I dont think a lot of critics of UBI give a crap about this. Or if they do they oppose it because the protestant work ethic or labor theory of value is so deeply ingrained in their thinking that the idea of doing away with work just breaks their brain. These people have developed stockholm syndrome of the system over time.

It's not because I want a small government and the protection of my freedoms. On the contrary, you've proven that UBI makes government smaller by removing the gigantic welfare infrastructure. Plus, you’ve amply proven that I'd probably not only be poor but dead if the government didn't step up to promote the general welfare in all the ways that laissez-faire fails, and that inequality, market instability, and environmental damage do indeed run amok without a democratic constitutional republic stepping in to stop the powerful from committing unconstitutional human rights abuses. 

 It makes it bigger in terms of dollars but reduces the bureaucracy and overreach,. Still, most interested in small government are just entrenched into the idea that property is sacred, taxation is theft, and state mandated redistribution is WRONG. Like, a lot of people in America are just morally opposed to the idea of UBI on that alone. THere is a lot of propaganda against the idea of redistribution in our society, and as eloquent as our ideas are, people just won't accept them because they are entrenched in competing belief systems. This is why, in my early idea of where I want to go in a book if I write a book, I'm spending a lot of time trying to tackle the worldview problem. Because in order to truly destroy these ideas in peoples' minds, you need to dig deeper and dig into their underlying worldviews and ideologies. You need to break down their existing belief systems and the principles in them before building up a new one in its place.

That is, by the way, why I was able to support UBI. Deconverting from christianity broke my existing worldview so bad it forced me to rewrite my entire system of ethics from scratch. And that's actually why I became receptive toward UBI. That is also why for years after deconverting from Christianity I was a die hard anti theist, and even though I'm spiritual now, I still hate organized religion. Because these old belief systems distort reality and make it hard to push for UBI. We literally might as well be speaking different languages.THe problem with ideas is behind them there are often a lot of underlying ideas that define their overall worldview. Mine is currently based on humanism. The idea of having human centered ethics with the idea of alleviating suffering. But a lot of people end up stuck with a christian worldview that tends to have suffering and the idea of a fallen world baked right into it. And a lot on the left have ideas based strongly on marxism that cause them to see class relations in a very specific way where the narrative of exploitation and the labor theory of value and class conflict defines their worldview on things. And they end up viewing things explicitly through that lens.

Speaking of which, I was considering writing an article on the anti work community as of late, but having talked to a lot of people in it more recently, I notice a lot of these guys dont even give a crap about being anti work any more. Why? Because their entire underlying view is steeped in marxism to the point that the second you start automating jobs they start going on about how it hurts the workers and how we should resist such business models as such. This is luddite nonsense. Being so obsessed with "the workers" in that way is missing the mark of what anti work is all about, it's about being against work. We should celebrate automation. We should want to work less. And before you ask "well what about the workers"...uh...duh. I'm literally the UBI guy. I'm the healthcare for all guy. I want to build a system that allows people to survive without work. But something I've noticed is...a lot people don't. A lot of anti work people would just rather circlejerk about marxism all day than actually fix the problem, of work. It's like they missed the point and got coopted into "leftism" as a whole. I've seen this coming for a while now actually. I mean look at how they treated Doreen Ford. "Oh noes, someone who actually is anti work and wants to work less than 20 hours a week? The horror. I just wanted to post memes about how much i hate my boss, im not really anti work...."

It's not because I believe in economic freedom, as I recognize that people in poverty suffer not due to bad choices but due to systemic inequalities and the stress of survival.

 Just a reminder, another issue of the christian worldview, sociology literally doesn't real for them. 

And as for the left. They'd rather fix problems...by giving people more work.

I hate politics these days...

It's not because UBI won't work. You've shown me the studies: Every basic-income pilot or program has worked with flying colors. It didn't cause people to sit home stoned watching Netflix. It instead led to increased employment, health, and well-being, across the board, with absolutely zero downsides to the rest of the community.

 "Well we dont know if it will actually work because it hasn't actually been tried".

Fair, but all evidence we have so far suggests it would, and you're just arguing under the assumption that your worldview is right until proven otherwise 100%. 

That's why my refusal to support UBI is not for any of those reasons you so willingly, thoroughly, and annoyingly disputed for the past several years.

IT'S BECAUSE OF THIS:

I want most people to suffer in meaningless jobs so that I can look and feel regal or godlike in comparison. I want to feel virtuous, and I want to see them as lacking in character. I want to believe in free will instead of causality and circumstance. I want to take credit for my good luck, and I want others to take the blame for their bad luck. 

 I want to feel unearned hubris. And I want others to feel unjustified shame.

 Yep. Keep in mind what I said about the upper class suburbanites and how our society is run by Karens. Those with the most power and prestege are happy with it and dont want to change society in such a way that takes it away from them. So they keep the meritocracy, not for the structurally functional reasons i do, but because they're the inherent winners of it, and it makes them feel good. It's some major oligarchy crap going on.

Of course, I know my privilege came from luck, but I don't care. If my success is not a result of a silver spoon, it's from my genetics colliding with circumstances, neither of which I chose.

I don't care that much about human life as it pertains to certain people. So let them suffer needlessly; let them claw, scrape, and climb all over each other in what amounts mostly to futility and waste, with one or two occasional lucky winners. 

 Yeah, literally this for a good chunk of people. 

Then, let those winners be fruitful and multiply to fill the world with schemers, backstabbers, and hoarders. More people like me. Because you never see a winner who, upon winning, wants to share. The only proponents of UBI are poor and lazy people. Rich people hate it, and we hate you. Die for all I care, but only after you clean my toilet. It makes me happier to know your life is a pale shadow of what it could have been and that mine is an embarrassment of riches I don't even know how to begin to deploy because nothing fills the gaping hole in my heart. You can tell people I said all this, but I'll deny, deny, deny."

 Yeah sadly this mentality is very common.

Of course, i didnt spend so much time focusing on ideology for nothing. A lot of people simply oppose UBI because of their worldviews. Right wingers have worldviews much like the fundie christians in which they literally dont care about suffering and deny any of the social hierarchies above. The left is blinded by marxism and the labor theory of value type crap, or alternative the work has dignity crap. And of course, THEN you got the crap for brains in the center in the liberal camp who are literally this. Really, this is why i cant stand how cozy the suburbanite upper class is with the democrats. As long as those guys are the leading faction of the democrats, UBI and other nice things will never come to pass. Because they're the big losers.

Theres a reason I was willing to push them to the GOP while trying to deconvert right wingers out of their fundamentalist christian cult and into the world of working class politics. It's because it would work at actually pushing the world in the direction we wanted it. Instead we got wokeism and pink capitalism, yay...

 Still, is this a good article? You bet it is. It does capture a common American attitude that needs to be addressed, and that's one of them just flat out not giving a crap about suffering, being satisfied about their specific place on the social hierarchy, and basically saying screw those lower than me. We could make a better world where people dont have to suffer but the winners of the current social hierarchy largely dont want that because it means they won't have someone to look down their nose at and feel superior to.

And this is why in the context of Van Parijs' "lazies vs crazies", sometimes I just wanna say, screw the crazies. They impose their little social hierarchy on us, they like it, and they wanna feel superior, so why should I care about them? It's also why I look down on those guys with disdain that the modern american left only seems to reserve for people who challenge woke ideology. Because for me, the #1 issue with society, if we wanna make a villain out of someone, is these kinds of people. They're the ones making life a living hell for the rest of us, and they're the ones we should have disdain for. Yes, this mentality is largely associated with the whole workers vs capital divide, but it runs deeper than that. It's not just about workers vs those who own the means of production. It's about those who win in the system in general and then look down their noses at others. That includes much of the middle class, and especially the so called "upper middle class", who often times arent very middle at all (seriously, if you're in the top quintile of income earners, you're not "middle" by any conventional definition of the word, sorry, and yes, you should pay more taxes to subsidize everyone else). 

 We could have a society where we're all free and pretty well off. But some people enjoy their status so much they'd rather have someone beneath them than to fix the concept of social hierarchy. This isn't just about apathy either, but more active acceptance of injustice in this sense. I'm not gonna pull the whole "you're racist unless youre actively anti racist" crap. That just alienates people. My goal isn't those who are neutral and/or ignorant or tuned out or whatever. It's those who actively seek to preserve the status quo because they dont want the world to be a better place. 

Discussing JK Rowling, feminism, and SJWs

 I swear, no one seems to live rent free in SJW's heads like JK Rowling does. Apparently she's coming out with a new Harry Potter movie and the cancel culture people are screaming about it and giving us our 100th reminder that she's a transphobe. Now, I'm not a Harry Potter fan. I never cared about the series, and feel like I'm JUST too old for it. Like, it was new when I was in middle school, a couple classmates liked it, I never got into it, and it's mostly people my age or younger into it with my age being on the cutoff of liking it or not.

Anyway, she came out as a "trans exclusionary radical feminist" or "TERF", and any time she rears her head on anything the rest of the social justice community has to screech about this, as if it's the worst thing in the world. 

As I see it, this is one of those stupid leftist infighting things. Feminism in its modern forms, is, in itself, toxic. All identity politics is really. Not saying the MRAs are any better. More that feminists are just the female equivalent of MRAs, same energy. It's just a bunch of tribalism that is inherently exclusionary of people of other identity groups. And a lot of Rowlings views seem come from that kind of toxicity. Basically, she's saying that there's something mystical about womenhood or something and you have to be born into it, you just can't cut off Mr. PP and be part of the club. And of course, this pisses off the "trans women are real women" crowd. And honestly much like the 2008 primaries between Clinton and Obama and all the idpol mudslinging there, or Dave Chappelle hiding behind his blackness to push his own narratives on the subject, I just see it as hilariously hypocritical. I mean, you guys created this monster. You created these groups based on identity, and then you get into these fights of who is most oppressed, and you end up fighting with each other as different strains of the same BS. As someone who thinks ALL of this stuff is stupid, I'm just laughing at you guys, going to be honest. 

On to the cancel culture thing, since a lot of SJWs are putting this line in the sand, that if you buy the movie or whatever you're a transphobe for giving her money, but I'm going to be honest, I really don't care. I would literally eat at chic fil a if I actually liked their chicken, and I freaking HATE fundamentalist christianity. I mean, my entire modern political identity is based off of that "original sin" so to speak of leaving the religion. So you can't get more personal than that. But I would still eat their chicken, yes, I would. You wanna know why? Because markets are transactional and if I cancelled every company that said or did something against my values, I guess I just wouldn't buy anything ever. I literally don't believe our system in its current form is ethical in the first place, and most transactions would run afoul of some belief of mine. That, and I recognize that I can disagree with someone while still liking their art or their products or services. One does not necessarily poison the other for me. I really dont believe in cancel culture much at all. It doesn't mean my views are reactionary, it just means i dont care for SJW virtue signalling bull#### and I'm not going to go without something just because of some abstract political opinion not directly related to the purchase itself (ie, the price too high, not liking the business model, etc.).

I mean, again if you wanna know my views on all of this: rights for women, rights for trans people, rights for everyone. Like, it's that simple for me. I don't really like to spend a lot of time actually thinking about the nuances of this issue, i'm just like "how is it so hard to allow people to live and let live?" I'm not gonna purity test anyone for having the wrong opinion on X arcane social justice issue that is totally a purity test. That crap is toxic and the ex conservative in me still has JUST enough of that "own the libs" mentality to be like...yeah F you guys, I'll do what I want. 

 But honestly, yeah. I don't care. Like, in my opinion, the only one that should really matter is "do you believe people deserve equal rights and freedom to live as they want as long as they dont hurt others or are you a reactionary piece of crap?" Notice how that's different from what SJWs actually ARE.

I mean, to my knowledge, JK Rowling isn't anti trans RIGHTS. She just doesn't believe that "trans women" really belong as bona fide members of her little identity club. And that tends to run afoul of the authoritarian SJWs who believe that you BETTER believe that trans women are real women or you're a nazi. If anyone wants to know my views on this, basically, I struggle to say they're "real women" in some sense. I believe that they have a right to live as a woman if they want, and they should be reasonably accommodated and respected for that and you shouldn't be a massive jerk to your local trans people about it (like some right wingers like to do, they LOVE to get in peoples' faces about that stuff and that's obnoxious too). But at the same time, let's be honest, would I say, sleep with a trans woman? No. No I would not. Why? Because I'm a straight male and doing so feels less than straight to me. Which kind of implies that something in me recognizes them as less than the gender they claim to be. There's nothing wrong with that. I have my preferences. And if that preference is a prejudice then I don't care if some pink haired weirdo on twitter thinks I'm "wrong." Again, I don't want to take away anyone's rights. I just want mine respected as well. You do your thing, I do mine, whatever.

My big problem here is SJWs having to push their dogma down everyone's throats. They really are like the modern religious right here. They have their little agendas, you BETTER not disagree with them in any way, or you're a bad person, and they'd likely treat me as a TERF or something too for my opinion (note: im not a terf, i reject your entire brand of politics, I'm nothing but an enlightened centrist to you people who craps on both sides of this modern culture war nonsense). And the thing that pisses me off most? I actually would say i agree with them on big picture issues. I support womens' rights, I support trans rights. But what I dont appreciate is being crapped on for not agreeing with those things for the same reasons and having the same worldview or ideology. I come at this stuff from a humanist worldview, not a postmodernist one. My opinion is one of "no gods no masters" and just being anti dogma. And I'm just as openly hostile to the far left and their nonsense as I am the religious right these days. Again, in terms of social issues, my ultimate view is "leave people alone and let them live as they want." I dont want to make you adhere to any purity test other than "dont be an authoritarian reactionary POS", which somehow, the left fails these days with their extreme tribalism and purity tests.

Discussing Ireland's basic income coverage

 So, Ireland recently came out with a study suggesting that a basic income would require tax rates of 40-60% to fund, seemingly suggesting this is a bad idea that screws over workers. It could cost Ireland roughly 50 billion Euros in a country with a GDP of....500 billion. Gee, that doesn't seem right, I mean, that's 10% of their GDP. my own plan of $4 trillion in the US is 20%, and I'd have tax rates in the 40-60% range roughly for most people (well technically more like 35-65% or so). Of course, UBI wouldn't have tax rates like that in itself. My actual plan has around an 18% tax give or take, and I'm comfortable with up to 20% (to be fair i do have other taxes and budget cuts), and my plan is closer to...20% of GDP. My first thought is "what's happening here? How much in taxes are they already paying?" Because not only does Ireland have a higher GDP than the US ($99k), they also are proposing a benefit not much different than I would propose here in the US, around 1200 Euros a month (assuming a Euro is roughly equal to a dollar here), I mean, if anything this UBI should be relatively affordable. To be fair their GDP is deceptively high, so the numbers don't add up, but assuming the numbers are 1/4 lower, that's still around $74k a person. I don't understand why they would need to pay more than 20% to fund such a UBI.

That leads me to ask, what do they pay now? After all they might have a strong welfare state that leads to higher taxes. Well, seems like it's 20% on the low end and 40% on the high end. Which means if UBI costs 20% more, we could see rates up to 40-60%. But is that a bad thing? Keep in mind, there's a difference between MARGINAL tax rates and total tax rates. As Scott Santens pointed out in his attempt to debunk this BS, when you consider tax rates with UBI, you need to consider the UBI as a massive tax refund of sorts. If you actually structured this as an NIT no one would complain. Because below the clawback, it's not seen as taxation, merely being given a net refund from the government. Sure, if you make say, $40k at a job, you might pay an extra $8k in taxes on top of what you already pay, but if you get $14,400 back, you're actually getting a net benefit of $6400. If you got a random $6400 from Uncle Sam (using US terminology here) on your tax return, you would be happy. If some republican president gave you a tax cut of $6400 you'd be praising him to high heavens (I've seen republicans praise Trump for far less). But when the MARGINAL tax rates go up, but you get a UBI offsetting it, most people actually benefit. You're not actually losing out. Yes, the marginal reward from working your job might be less relative to your income, but you will still see significant changes in income from working, and you will still probably have more money. Seriously, if you're in Ireland, and your taxes go up by 20% to 40-60%, here's what's gonna happen. You're going to pay more taxes, but at the new 40% rate, if you earn E36,800, you're going to be paying an additional E7,360 in taxes but get back E14,400. You're around E7k ahead. And to break even with what you pay now, you'd need to earn E72,000. For anyone above that, YES, your tax burden would be higher than right now. But UBI isn't for people at the higher end of the income spectrum. Yes, they get it on paper, but their total net tax burden will be greater than the UBI. And that's totally fair. It is fair to ask for those with the most to pay for everyone else in my opinion. 

Will 40-60% be too high of a work disincentive? Well, we've had these questions before, and I think it's complicated. obviously any UBI will obviously lead to SOME decreased work incentive, as do a higher marginal income tax, but generally speaking, given the insane marginal tax rates of a traditional welfare state (not sure if Ireland is as bad as the US in this regard), we might actually see an improvement here. As for the rates in general, uh, 40-60% doesn't seem bad in and of itself, if combined with other tax rates we could get over laffer curve territory (70% or so), but assuming we keep marginal tax below 70% i wouldnt expect people to quit their jobs over that. The UBI itself could cause MORE of an issue since it could remove compulsion to work in the first place, but I haven't seen much social science suggesting it would happen at levels devastating to society. Of course, I don't know European countries' exact tax rates and welfare expenditures well. From what I can tell from the articles at the beginning, like 40% of the cost could be covered by cutting welfare? Well, I don't see the rates as really being THAT much higher then. Looking here their lowest marginal rate is 20% and the highest is 52%, so an extra 20% would be 40-72%, which is...about where I would say the max is. Again if you removed some existing welfare/social insurance you could probably squeeze it under the 70% limit.

In practice, is a UBI here questionable as a policy? Yeah, it's kind of brushing against that maximum ceiling of sustainable taxation here. But it also faces higher taxes than the US for the rich already. Top marginal income here is like 47% (including local taxes), not 52%. This means an extra 20% here gets us up to 67%, not 72%. But I don't think it's the end of the world either way. if people really have a concern about implementing this, they can do so slowly over time in order to minimize any shocks to the economy or complications which arise.

The point is, this article is misleading. It's the same thing Nixon did when McGovern came out in favor of UBI, go "OMG HE WANTS TO PUT THE WHOLE COUNTRY ON WELFARE AND MAKE YOU PAY FOR IT." It tends to be bait for angry working class voters complaining about taxes going to layabouts and blah blah blah.

Uh...again, most workers will benefit. I dont know Ireland's exact income distribution, but in the US, I see like 75% of people or so benefitting from UBI. People should not fear higher tax rates if they benefit more at the end of the day. Imagine if this was a $14400 tax credit combined with higher marginal taxes, I doubt people would complain as much. It's just the psychology of how peoples' brains work.

Reacting to the Van Parijs chapter on global basic income and the issues of immigration and capital flight

 So....we got to the final chapter of Van parijs book. I don't think I'll do a full on reaction to it since I've written literally 5-6 posts on the subject by now, but the final one is on the topic of a global income and how to make UBI work in a globalized world. And I know my opinions on this subject are going to be unpopular with the post 2016 left (as a matter of fact, this is a core reason I hate both parties these days and believe neither truly represent my values), but my stance is that in order for a utopia with basic income and the right to say no to work, we need to cut the idea of UBI at a nation's borders. 

As I have expressed previously, I am an economic nationalist. I believe that the core unit of governance in this world is currently the nationstate, and that in the context of UBI, any UBI will need to be distributed via such entities. We need a state that can tax and raise revenue, and we need to be able to spend money. This goes back to the fact that my idea of the state more or less goes back to things like social contract theory and the fact that the state is supposed to exist for the benefit of the people it serves. And I do believe that states have more of a responsibility toward their own citizens than outsiders. This is not to say it would exploit, abuse, or harm outsiders any more than absolutely necessary to achieve its goals (after all, foreign policy is a mess and I do begrudgingly affect that we are forced to make certain ethical decisions on such a scale that tend to be somewhat questionable at times....), but this does not mean that governments are responsible for the well being of those outside of their borders, or those in their borders who do not belong here (such as illegals). 

If we have a universal basic income, distributed by the local nation state, in this case, the United States, then it should primarily go to American citizens and legal permanent residents who plan on staying here and becoming citizens one day. It should not go to outsiders. Such an idea just is not sustainable. This is a huge reason I oppose "globalism" and "neoliberalism". My ideas are not compatible with it, as a UBI would lead not just to lots of immigration in, but also a lot of capital flight out. It makes sense that a UBI advocate wanting to pass a UBI in their home country is able to deal with the influx of immigrants in, and the flow of capital out. 

In terms of the flow of capital out, I'm just going to say it, there should be a 100% exit tax on assets above a certain amount if people renounce their citizenship. It was the country that allowed you to acquire the wealth in the first place, and that wealth is forfeited and belongs to the people if you try to leave with it. Some see this as authoritarian, but I see it as necessary to stop capital flight. Besides, I support keeping the laffer curve at or below roughly 70% to minimize capital flight anyway. Sure, France had an issue with capital flight a few years ago, but they supported a 75% income tax on top of other taxes leading to an effective tax rate near 100%. That is obviously bad, but as long as the total combined tax rate between local/state/federal is under 70% or so, I do not anticipate significant problems. 

As for people coming in, illegals should not get UBI and society should continue to stigmatize illegal immigration to some degree. Maybe not as much as the hyper nationalist Trumpdy Dumpdies, do but more than the permissive mindset of the far left. Illegals should not get any UBI or government aid at all, legal immigrants I am open to getting UBI given they meet certain conditions. Van Parijs did mention that it is unfair to tax immigrants for labor done while denying them some form of aid, but we could revert to a more "social insurancy" style negative income tax style UBI for them, with UBI associated with work effort on the behalf of these immigrants. This will not give them true freedom like a citizen would have, but it is a fair compromise I think. 

As for an actual global UBI, I'm not in favor of such a proposal. Not only because I do not believe that the nation's obligations go beyond that specific nation state and its members, but because I do not believe it is feasible. The living standards question is already debatable within the US, given varying standards of living between locations as it is. I've already seen a lot of "middle class" people from areas like NYC or urban California reject my proposal on the basis that they would not benefit from the idea and that I would tax them too much and that $80k a person (my rough income cutoff where you end up paying more than you get back in UBI) is not that much. This is, of course, a problem limited to only the biggest cities with the highest cost of livings, and the core problem there being that too many people want to live in those areas and that the cost is so high because of the simple supply and demand problem those areas have. Now imagine this issue but made many times worse by how unequal global wealth really is. No first world nation would benefit from such a UBI. if you took $4 trillion from the US (about what my national UBI plan costs) and redistributed it globally to 8 billion people, each person would get $500 a year. While this would be enough to stave off the most extreme global poverty, distributed among that many people, it wouldn't even be enough to match the $2.15 a day standard set by the world bank. That would amount to about $785 for a year. Of course the rest of the world would hopefully be pitching in too, but yeah, it would be a massive net drain for global north countries. I always keep comparing these ideas to the idea of letting the oxygen out of the airplane to help people outside of the plane breathe better. Not only does it not help, it just kills everyone inside the airplanes. I believe that poverty within the US can be easily solved by a UBI, but global poverty is a much more complex question, and I really just don't have many answers for it other than providing a blueprint for other nations to adapt to their own political structures as they please. 

Really, that's my solution, "have your own government make your own UBI". I believe the idea could work in just about any nation with a decent amount of stability and a functioning capitalist economy. it might only be a few hundred dollars in the poorest nations, but as trials in many of those countries have shown, it can work there. It does improve lives. I just do not support a mass transfer of wealth from the first world to the third. Each nation should be responsible for their own UBI. And I could see the US and other countries using things like the prospect of trade agreements and other pressure to pressure those countries into adopting a UBI within their own countries. That, in my opinion, is how to flip neoliberalism and the race to the bottom on its head, by actively encouraging other countries to adopt a UBI and have comparable tax rates and expenditure as a percentage of GDP to our own. It would solve the third world exploitation problem by multinational companies and give the world freedom for all that way. 

Van parijs mentioned implementing it on the EU level. I could see that working but I could see it also triggering resentment. Again, living standards are quite unequal in the EU with northern and western European countries generally being richer than southern and eastern ones. As a matter of fact, the EU has regularly shown a preference toward the richer countries, implementing policies that help for example, Germany, while leaving countries like Spain, italy and greece out to dry. The EU is mostly dedicated to neoliberalism within its borders and given the chance has forced austerity on countries not able to afford their welfare states due to national debt and the like. This has caused a lot of resentment and is one of the reasons I feel like the EU is an organization a lot of Europeans have soured on in recent years. The other problem with the EU is immigration. From what I understand, talking to people with more of an alt right persuasion, is that if any one nation state in the EU lets immigrants in, they can then go anywhere else in the EU and collect social benefits there. This is a huge reason why the alt right is spreading in Europe. it's a direct response to the flaws of the EU and its structure and governing philosophy. Muslim immigrants from the middle east or northern Africa come in through poorer countries in eastern Europe and then go on to other countries like Sweden or France or until recently the UK, where a lot of nationalist resentment thrives. This has led to countries like the UK pulling out altogether, and there being scary moments where literal fascists start becoming more mainstream in countries like France (see how close Marine Le Pen came to winning there). Ultimately, if the left wants to counter growing alt right influence in Europe, they need to address issues with immigration and neoliberalism. All of this crap, both in America with Donald Trump, and in the EU with various alt right parties, is due to a rejection of neoliberalism. Austerity, open borders, unfettered immigration, a loss of jobs and other prospects. I believe in the US a UBI oriented ethos can be a solution, and in Europe, for UBI to be viable within the EU, they need to address the downsides of neoliberalism, both in terms of austerity, and also in terms of immigration. 

As you guys can see, my own solution is to move hard to the center, maybe even adopting mild right wing sentiments on the subject. I believe it is necessary for UBI to work. I fully concede that more mainstream lefties may have an easier time being for open borders and blah blah blah given they support conditional welfare and social insurance system based on contributions. For them, the center of what makes someone valuable in a society is their labor. But for me, I view UBI as a right of citizenship, which makes me a lot more skeptical toward immigration. It should be noted I am NOT alt right, and do NOT endorse those sentiments. I would consider myself a moderate who supports controlled immigration and in terms of trade, "fair trade" (as opposed to free trade a la neoliberalism or full on protectionism a la the right). But I do have anti immigration sentiments in large part due to my specific philosophy otherwise. if I have to choose between a society with free and open immigration and a society with less work, I will choose less work every time. I will support keeping the airplane closed so the passengers inside can breathe, knowing that opening up at 30,000 feet will kill us all.

And yeah, that's my take on this chapter. I largely do not agree with Van parijs here, and I do take a much more economic nationalist take on the subject of immigration, and "freedom of movement" in order to make my own conception of UBI work. perhaps if we do actively encourage other countries to adopt a UBI and every country has a UBI of comparable quality in terms of per capita GDP, we can start discussing opening up immigration a bit more. But for the first countries to try the idea, yeah, I think we're going to need to approach immigration more cautiously.

Reacting to the Van Parijs chapter on political viability

 So, the next chapter of the book seems to be about political viability. He kind of took a similar stance with me, in that we should not necessarily cede ground in the face of a hostile political environment. if anything it is up to us to shape the environment ourselves to make things more viable. Nothing kills ideas faster than the self defeating idea that this isn't practical and shouldnt be tried. I admit I do make SOME compromises SOMETIMES, but generally speaking, one issue I have is I am normally very UNcompromising, and that's to a fault. And that's one different I had with Van parijs in this chapter. Van Parijs seemed a lot more willing to try to sell UBI to people of other political ideologies by arguing within their ideology to shift them. Sometimes even offering trojan horse compromises like a "participation income", in which we have a conditional UBI based on participating in some form of work or labor, even if it is charity, and then dropping it later on due to the fact that such an idea will require insane amounts of enforcement to accomplish.

Of course, I would argue we're already there with the dysfunction in our current system already, and I actually do plan to make a lot of points clear, if I do write a book of my own, for example, for why our system already is broken and how this expectation that we all work is stupid, irrational, and actually makes us all miserable. Seriously, I look at life in the US and other western countries, and as I see it, we're so close to utopia already, with our democratic country (or at least the pretense of stuff), lots of civil liberties, a thriving GDP, a culture surrounding freedom, that if we just take this a step further and give people a UBI, universal healthcare, and maybe a couple things, we will likely be as close to heaven on earth as we can realistically get for the foreseeable future. But, this idea is what's holding us back. We expect people to work, don't have enough jobs available, don't pay people for the jobs that we do, and are so fixated on this principle that we must all work for our bread that as a result, we worry about fear of tomorrow and want and put up with oppressive relationships, all because we can't get away from this idea of work. Rather than pursuing a world where we all work less, we pursue the insanity that is fully employing as much of the population in general and that the American ideal is every single able bodied person working 40+ hours a week to provide for themselves. You know? As I see it, if we had a participation income, people would cling to it being participatory. People already cling to outdated ideals that don't work very well and cause a lot of harm in my opinion because they can't grasp the idea that this stuff should be voluntary. 

And that's kind of the problem I have with trying to work within other peoples' value systems. Worldviews matter. And I kind of believe UBI activists need to construct a new world view, and a new philosophy, from an entirely new set of assumptions, from the ground up, in order to promote UBI and the freedom it provides. As long as we insist on trying to compromise with "jobist" frameworks, we're not really making progress. Because our ideas will be taken and perverted and watered down to fit their belief systems, leaving us barely better off than we were before. And I'm really getting to the point in terms of nihilism that in a lot of ways, the right, the left, the center, they're all the same, and like Bob Black would point out, they all argue over the conditions of work and who makes the decisions and who gets what, but none of them challenge work itself. This is not to say that they're all equally bad. I would say that between the three major factions, the laissez faire capitalists of the right, the socialists of the left, and the liberals and social democrats of the center, I have a significant preference for the liberals and social democrats. Especially the more left side of that part of the spectrum. I think that the solution to our problems does involve keeping capitalism around in some form, but heavily reforming it to meet our needs. I just disagree with the social democrats and the liberals on how much and what kinds of changes need to be made. But I also recognize that even in that center there are going to be a lot of movements that oppose what I'm about. 

Van Parijs is a bit more conciliatory than I am. He points out the various factions, but tries to tailor arguments to fit their worldviews. I kind of understand that their worldviews are flaws and even if there are sub factions within these worldviews that can go along with my ideas, many of them never fully will. Because their worldviews are based on ideological principles that go against mine. For a union supporter, they may not be able to get around the idea that the goal of unions is to raise wages and improve working conditions for workers, and understand that they are the ones who should do it. UBI threatens their cultural power and relevance by diminishing the relative value of jobs, and their role in improving peoples' income. Some christians such as catholics, may be more amenable to UBI, but you will always have those biblical literalists and the "those who don't work don't eat" crowd. Some socialists might see it as a "capitalist road to socialism", but as Van Parijs himself pointed out, socialists literally struggle to distance themselves from the centrality of labor in our lives. The point is, all of these groups are finnicky allies at best, and often our political foes. And it's because, again, worldview matters. WORLDVIEW MATTERS. The underlying assumptions behind your worldview matter and for better or for worse, dictate how you view every other issue in your lives. And that's kind of why I think it's important for UBI advocates to create our own political ideology, and our own political traditions. Van Parijs has attempted to do this to some extent with his 'real libertarianism" argument. And Karl Widerquist has attempted to do so with his "indepentarianism" argument. And I really think it's important to try to preserve and build upon these traditions, than to cede ideological ground to our opponents. That's what escaping Plato's Cave is about. Not compromising with the cave so to speak, but showing its falsehoods. And showing people how to think instead. Making them question their own assumptions, and hopefully, to come to accept ours instead.

If I write a book of my own, this will likely be a major focus of it. Because that's what my unique contribution to the subject. Bog standard UBI books have been done to death. We know the idea works, or at least has a very good chance of working. We know that it would probably make peoples' lives are better. But our biggest opposition to getting it done is the underlying ideology and worldview that undergirds most of our social traditions. And I am going to have to deconstruct that worldview and explain the problems with it, while promoting something in its place. 

Even if I don't do a book, as, by the way, Im not sure it would make a good book and I'm not sure I would be a good author, it's still something I have tried to do with this blog from day 1. And I have written many articles on my views where you probably know what I mean by deconstructing worldviews and building our own in their place.

So how reliable are econometrics in determining economic policy?

 So, as we know, Phillippe Van parijs pointed out in his chapter on UBI studies and the feasibility of taxing people that he suspects that middle to upper income people will work less under a UBI. While I have a general understanding of the economic model that would suggest that, basically, higher marginal taxes = less work effort, but I would argue there may be a bit of an elasticity issue that tends to mitigate that. After all, people making $40k, 50k, 60k, etc. aren't like to quit working if they get a UBI. They would be living on a fraction of their income. And while the working conditions in and of themselves might cause them to quit in some scenarios, I'm not overly concerned here. 

Anyway, I know I've seen people make weird arguments about work incentives from econometrics and any time I did, I basically dismissed them because these econometrics seem based on models and these models are only as good as their assumptions. And economists like to make a lot of assumptions in "free market" models that tend to have a much more complex relationship in reality. For example, it makes intuitive sense that raising the minimum wage increases unemployment, but then if anything worker bargaining power and a higher minimum wage causes inflation, with a minimum wage increase leading to a small spike of inflation followed by a levelling off, and persistent issues with worker bargaining power leading to a wage price spiral forcing the fed to step in and raise interest rates to reduce the supply of jobs available, thus reducing worker bargaining power. 

Of course, pointing this out led to me getting laughed off as one of those anti intellectuals when in reality i just realize that economics is taken with this weird quasi religious faith in it, and that in a lot of cases it makes simplistic assumptions about the world whereas the world is often more complicated. It tries to boil all of human action down to economic calculations and there is more to life than that. That said, it tends to sometimes develop these seemingly valid relationships between variables, but then just make broad wide sweeping claims about them. That said, I want to look a bit more into econometrics.

So what is econometrics? This is going to be one of those quote happy articles, but econometrics is:

Econometrics uses economic theory, mathematics, and statistical inference to quantify economic phenomena. In other words, it turns theoretical economic models into useful tools for economic policymaking. The objective of econometrics is to convert qualitative statements (such as “the relationship between two or more variables is positive”) into quantitative statements (such as “consumption expenditure increases by 95 cents for every one dollar increase in disposable income”). Econometricians—practitioners of econometrics—transform models developed by economic theorists into versions that can be estimated. As Stock and Watson (2007) put it, “econometric methods are used in many branches of economics, including finance, labor economics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, and economic policy.” Economic policy decisions are rarely made without econometric analysis to assess their impact. 

 This is kind of straightforward, and I already kind of touched on this, but they basically take relationships between variables and try to make a model charting how one variable impacts the other.

Certain features of economic data make it challenging for economists to quantify economic models. Unlike researchers in the physical sciences, econometricians are rarely able to conduct controlled experiments in which only one variable is changed and the response of the subject to that change is measured. Instead, econometricians estimate economic relationships using data generated by a complex system of related equations, in which all variables may change at the same time. That raises the question of whether there is even enough information in the data to identify the unknowns in the model. 

 Yeah and this is kind of what I am saying. I mean, variables are complex, the world is complex, and social science is hard. Social science has increased difficulties over hard sciences in the sense that human behavior, especially on the aggregate level, just has so many variables that it's hard to know whether soemthing is valid or not without significant research. Much research has limitations (as van parijs pointed out with UBI experiments), and economics just tends to make a lot of broad assumptions which might have surface value, but the reality behind them is more complex.

The second step is the specification of a statistical model that captures the essence of the theory the economist is testing. The model proposes a specific mathematical relationship between the dependent variable and the explanatory variables—on which, unfortunately, economic theory is usually silent. By far the most common approach is to assume linearity—meaning that any change in an explanatory variable will always produce the same change in the dependent variable (that is, a straight-line relationship).

Yeah that seemed to be what was being implied with the whole "middle and upper income people would work less" model. It assumed that for every percentage point increase in marginal tax, it would decrease work incentive, and that for every dollar in UBI, people would also decrease work incentive. And then it ran a linear model, implying that the labor market was far more sensitive to fluctuations in tax rates and UBI than I would assume. Basically for low income people more people would work because the current system and its welfare traps are so discouraging, but that for higher income people, the increases in tax rates and free money would make them less likely. Again, this makes intuitive sense, and I understand why an econometric model would imply that, but again, it seems kind of....thin. Perhaps work incentive, especially at the higher level, is a lot more static and less sensitive to changes in work effort than you would think. While I do think, at some point, yes, people would decide to work less or flee the country or whatever, the laffer curve surrounding such a model seems relatively generous, and it does not really seem that negative effects would appear until you hit the 70% mark or so. That's what I concluded when I looked into laffer curves last year. Generally speaking, based on my own research, an actual laffer curve model would look something like this, where you don't really see significant reductions in revenue, and thus, work effort, until marginal tax rates start approaching 100%. Then as you get closer and closer to 100%, the bottom falls out and you start seeing massive responses to the increased taxation. But assuming you're under the laffer curve of 70%, the relationship should probably be smaller.

But again, if econometrics is going to assume a LINEAR relationship, it's going to be like, "every single percentage point increase in taxation will have the same labor response", and if higher taxes DO in fact decrease work effort, then ANY tax increases anticipated would lead to some significant amount to work reduction. Even if in reality the relationship is far more complicated and it would take a truly oppressive tax rate before people quit en masse.

I would argue the same is true of basic income itself. I would guess that not many people would quit their jobs for $1 a month. If you go up to $100 a month, you probably won't see much either. At $500 a month you might see a few, but not much. At $1000 a month, you might see a bit more. At $2000 a month or higher the labor response likely gets more severe. Smaller amounts of UBI dont yield much, or maybe even ANY impact, but after a certain point, it might start triggering a large response.

My own understanding of UBI, and why I kind of downplay the idea of work disincentives with it (despite also arguing for real freedom for all or the freedom to say no), is that as long as UBI is on the right side of the curves, work incentive should be a minor issue. If a certain point in the curve is passed, however, you might start seeing much larger effects. I advocate for putting a UBI right at the point in the curve where we can maximize freedom while maintaining economic viability. Where a higher UBI starts causing problems, but the UBI at the level implemented doesn't really. Basically, I view the UBI work incentive curve as mirroring the laffer curve posted above, and that UBI should be implemented at or near the peak of the curve. This is not to say that there will not be ANY work disincentive if UBI is at that point in the curve, just that the amount is not a major deal and does not threaten the sustainability of the economic system. Some work disincentive is going to happen with UBI, especially a UBI that gives people real freedom for all, yes. The goal is to give people the maximal amount of freedom without threatening the sustainability of the system. If too many people quit too fast, and it causes supply shortages of essential goods and services and inflation, that's bad. If the effects are much more minor, well, I do view freedom as more important than MAXIMIZING economic well being within an economic model. Keep in mind, economics has a labor bias. It has a bias toward incentivizing work and productivity to maximize economic output, without thinking about what that means for human life in general. it enslaves us to a system, when the system exists to work for us in the first place, you know? If the work disincentive is so large it sends the system into a death spiral, that's bad, but if the effects are relatively minor compared to that, I'm willing to accept people working less. As a matter of fact, to some extent that's the point. 

The fourth step is by far the most important: administering the smell test. Does the estimated model make economic sense—that is, yield meaningful economic predictions? For example, are the signs of the estimated parameters that connect the dependent variable to the explanatory variables consistent with the predictions of the underlying economic theory? (In the household consumption example, for instance, the validity of the statistical model would be in question if it predicted a decline in consumer spending when income increased). If the estimated parameters do not make sense, how should the econometrician change the statistical model to yield sensible estimates? And does a more sensible estimate imply an economically significant effect? This step, in particular, calls on and tests the applied econometrician’s skill and experience.

...

 The main tool of the fourth stage is hypothesis testing, a formal statistical procedure during which the researcher makes a specific statement about the true value of an economic parameter, and a statistical test determines whether the estimated parameter is consistent with that hypothesis. If it is not, the researcher must either reject the hypothesis or make new specifications in the statistical model and start over.

 YES! And this is the issue with econometrics in general. It's not necessarily connected to reality. It needs to be validated with external testing. It;'s fine to have this model that predicts certain variables and how they interact, but econometrics is still a matter of, as a part of the article I did not quote pointed out, "garbage in garbage out". It's only as good as the assumptions that it relies upon. And social science means, at some point, going out there and testing your hypotheses. Which means we need UBI trials, and we do have some data from trials. but because trials themselves are imperfect, to some extent, we just need to try to implement it already. We need a real world test scenario. Like on a large scale. With all of the macro economics involved. We need to actually test it full scale in a city, or a state, or a country, and measure the effects of it. And then we need to isolate those effects from other crap going on to make sure that UBI actually caused those problems (for example, if we tested it in 2020, people would NOW be blaming it for inflation despite the fact that inflation happened anyway). 

I'm not trying to discount econometrics altogether. I know I kind of had people act like I was the last time this topic came up in this context. Rather, I'm trying to  point out that you can't just way "well this economic model says this" and treat it with some authority I cant dispute. I CAN dispute it. Because I'm, myself, trained in social sciences. I understand social sciences. I may not be an economics EXPERT, but I understand the field enough to grasp the basics of how these things work, and also understand the weaknesses behind such things.

I know that UBI has never fully been tried. And as a result, until it is, critics have the upper hand of being able to predict doomsday scenarios while discounting any data I present in its favor because it does not cover every variable possible. I am aware of that weakness of my position, but it does not necessarily make my position weak. If that makes any sense at all. It just means mine isn't foolproof. But, critics are, essentially just pointing out a lack of data in some areas and then exploiting that to imply that the worst case scenario would happen within the gaps of my knowledge. In a sense, the dreaded work disincentive exists in the gaps in my knowledge in a similar way of the "god of the gaps" in religious discussions. You know, the whole argument that god somehow could exist in the gaps of knowledge within an atheists worldview, and therefore god exists. Regardless of whether god exists or not (I would say they do in some form at this point but I can't prove it universally), you can't just use the possibility of them existing in a gap in our knowledge to say they don't. A lack of 100% certainty on our part does not mean that the opposing position is true, especially without any actual evidence presented. The people who argue for catastrophic work disincentives within a UBI program are basically arguing that the fact that there are gaps in my knowledge implies that their position is somehow correct. It COULD be correct, don't get me wrong, but they would actually need to put forward a strong case demonstrating that. Which at this point, we can only do, if we try to implement a UBI. 

That said, I'm not really convinced by the use of econometrics to argue for a work disincentive for higher income earners under UBI. I understand what the model is trying to get at, but these econometrics come from a place of using simplistic models with linear relationships when in reality I view those relationships to be a lot less linear. Much like the laffer curve (and in a sense, this really is just a matter of the idea of a laffer curve applied to UBI), I really don't think that the negative effects of UBI would really manifest themselves unless people are taxed at very high rates, and/or the UBI offered is excessive. If the UBI is near the poverty line, and the marginal tax rates are under, say, 70%, I don't really expect there to be problems. And we already discussed THOSE aspects of my plan to death in the past.

More Van Parijs book talk: discussing the pitfalls of UBI funding and experiments

 I don't plan on going too deep into this one as much of it is stuff I've beaten to death on here. Mostly discussing the more practical aspects of UBI. In this chapter, Van Parijs went into UBI studies, and ways of funding it. 

First he went into studies into the subject and how limited they are. It's common knowledge within the UBI academic community that despite promising results from UBI trials, UBI trials are flawed and are imperfect simulations of UBI. They are temporary programs, often done via a negative income tax format, with lots of observation involved (observing people changes their behavior if they know of being observed), and are often not universal and can't properly simulate what would happen if a full UBI were implemented.

He discussed inflation and how macro inflation was unlikely to happen from income transfers, but localized inflation could occur for various goods due to how redistributing income redistributes demand. he also focused on work disincentives, which is something I want to talk about. Van parijs seems to think that an income tax funded basic income could reduce work incentive more than one would think, pointing to econometric models. Basically, while a UBI would potentially increase work effort for those at the bottom of the spectrum, the higher taxes could reduce working hours among the people in the more middle and affluent ends of the spectrum. This is something I tend to discount in my own approach to UBI. I generally assume that the biggest issue is the bottom of the spectrum and those marginally attached to the labor force, but he seems to think that people who make more would stop working as much because of the substution effect and how higher taxes combined with a free income would reduce work incentives. I generally assume that the labor supply above the bottom of the income distribution is more inelastic. I base this on the idea that even if you make $80k a year, you pay $14400 more in taxes, but get $14400 back, you're not going to change much, and you're not going to quit over that. You aren't going to want to give up $80k a year ot live on $14400. The same applies further down. At $40k you might be taxed for an additional $7200 with face the same extra 18% tax, but you're not going to quit to live on $14400. And if you make $160k, you're likely not going to work less because youre taxed an extra $28800 and get an extra $14400 to compensate. Most jobs and labor market opportunities arent structured to allow people to set their own hours (although I think that this should be more common), and many jobs are set up in a "take it or leave it" type of way where you have to accept the package deal or not at all. Often times "voluntary overtime" isnt voluntary, and even when it is, people often want the extra money. It's possible an extra 18% to taxes might cause some people to work less, but I really tend to question the logic here. Like a lot of economic models also think raising the minimum wage increases unemployment when in practice it just leads to inflation if anything as the demand for labor is a lot less elastic than predicted.

So I'm not really sure if I buy that. I understand the logical argument that higher marginal tax rates tend to decrease work effort, and that higher levels of UBI can do that too, but in practice, I really question how elastic that is. Most concerns with work effort reduction are focused toward the bottom and those who are more marginally attached to the market. People in part time and gig work and stuff. Those in a traditional 40 week job at a good salary may be less inclined to quit, especially if their actual working hours aren't under their control and they would likely not reduce their income significantly just to live on UBI. I know models are models, but models are based on assumptions, and as long as the tax rate is below the laffer curve rates, I'm not going to be too concerned here.

Still, Van parijs did look at other methods of taxation too. And all of them have flaws. I discussed them before. VAT means that youre taxing the UBI itself when people spend it. A lot of taxes like wealth, inheritance, and corporate taxes tend to only raise a few hundred billion each if that. Land taxes are hard to really implement properly, and i have a personal concern about fairness and freedom there. And he didn't seem to think they could be implemented at a high enough level anyway.

He considered more limited versions of UBI, which would only go to certain people, and would go against my own, and many others' ideas of fairness and freedom. He considered implementing a more NIT type system aimed at higher marginal tax rates at the bottom of the distribution where econometric models would expect a work increase as we shift from a welfare system full of welfare traps, but a lower tax on higher earners to stop them from not working. But honestly, not only is that regressive, but it's kind of stupid. Do we really think higher earners would reduce their earnings that much? Again, below laffer curve rates (say, 70% marginal tax rate), I don't see a ton of evidence of people reducing their work efforts much in say, Europe. And my own UBI plan would make our tax scheme similar to Europe with like a 40% marginal tax rate at the low end, and a 70% at the high end, with it being around 50% in the middle.Of course Van Parijs, being a European, did seem to acknowledge that implementing the idea in Europe would lead to higher taxes than the US due to the already generous welfare state there anyway. Still, he did seem to think it would lead to like a 55% tax rate here. I dont know what plan he wants to implement exactly, but I do know his idea is a UBI plan at 25% of GDP per capita, which would be $18k a year this year, or 19k if we go by the new 76k GDP per capita data. I only want $14,400 with this year's plan, likely to increase to $15,000 or $15,600 next year. 

And then he basically considered, well, what if we did a partial UBI, which is basically what I would do. if we cant implement UBI in its full form, we should push it as far as we can and cap it at the highest sustainable amount. I would also recommend implementing a full UBI over time, say, 5-10 years or something. Say $3,000 year 1, $6,000 year 2, $9,000 year 3, $12,000 year 4, $15,000 year 5, with us adjusting to whatever ~$15k is now 5 years in the future for year 6, maybe $16-17k by then. Something like that. We implement minimum wage increases in the same way. if we were to implement a minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $15 overnight, it would be rather chaotic. Most plans I've seen to implement a $15 minimum wage phase it in over...say....5 years. Going in $1-3 increments a year. UBI should be done similarly. This would allow us to implement it slowly, observe the effects, and put the brakes on if something bad happens. We've already discussed this. but yeah, that is my solution, more or less, too. 

Honestly? We don't really know. That's the problem. We won't know with UBI until we actually implement it. I'd say the actual data from studies doesnt seem to produce data suggesting a large scale labor withdrawal i would consider problematic, but actual studies are flawed. Econometrics, according to Van parijs, seems to predict a bigger labor participation drop among middle and higher income earners, but I think this is counter intuitive, makes little sense, and is based on simplistic econ 101 logic and ignores factors like elasticity/inelasticity. Yes, if the market is elastic, yeah, you could see more of a drop. If it's less elastic, I would expect the drop to be less. To put it simply, I would say higher earners are less of a "flight risk" so to speak than low earners. Even if UBI provides a nice income you can live on, work will always be rewarded with more income. And while we can argue reducing the overall rewards structure could lead to less work effort, I really do think there would be some inelasticity there.

Take, for example, my dad. My dad got full social security benefits at 66, and that amount was similar to what a UBI would be for all three of us. But he worked until 70. Why? Because he liked the money. He liked the nice christmases, the weekends out, the vacations, that working on top of getting his social security provided. It's possible an extra 18% taxes could have reduced that somewhat, but at the same time, I really dont think a lot of people would full on quit. A lot of people like the extra money. 

Still, I do admit, we really don't know. We won't know until we implement it. We can do studies and make models all we want, but they will never be able to gauge what a full implementation will do. Studies have limiting factors and models are only as good as the assumptions. And reality is complex. So really, we need to get this implemented to see how it works. And it goes without saying, given its uncertain nature, yeah, we need to do it slowly. Implement it in over a period of years, start small and grow it over time. I dont think we should shy away from a "full basic income" or intentionally stifle our ambitions over this, but I do think that doing it slowly, over a period of years, would be better for the economy than just pushing it all at once and letting the pieces fall where they may. The former allows us to properly address issues as they arise, the latter can shock the economy leading to the idea failing and future discussion and implementations of it stigmatized.

Discussing even more of Parijs book: discussing the ethics behind objections to UBI and revisiting lazies vs crazies

 So, I don't want to go into great detail about this chapter given I've actually written a quite lengthy post about his framing of this stuff that aged a lot better than I initially thought I did, although i do want to revisit this stuff and make some mild corrections. 

Basically I mostly want to address the common objections to UBI on my own grounds. 

First of all, I want to point out the two major objections to UBI and the lack of work requirement surrounding it. The first points to work as leading to some sort of "good life", and the second is more based on fairness. I have arguably addressed both of these points in the past, but I will do so again now.

On the idea that work is some conception of a good life, I'm going to go back to my worldview. I come from a perspective of secular humanism and there being no real objective morality. Life if what we make it, and we do with it what we will. Under this perspective, the idea of work being part of a "good life" makes no sense to me. I mean, the logic comes down to "work is so great, we need to force you to do it." What kind of authoritarian nonsense is that? I mean, these concepts are foreign to me in my own personal ideology. And while, as Van Parijs points out, while it's fine to accept strange dogmas and live according to them in your own personal life, the state is supposed to be secular and preserve peoples' freedoms as much as possible. The government should not be forcing people to accept what their idea of a good life is,but rather just solve disputes in which people in fringe on each others' freedom or well being, while largely leaving them alone to live as they want. If you want to work and live that "good life", that's fine. But you do not have a right to force ME to do so. Heck in the context of work, the idea that work is part of a good life comes off to me as some weird nazi-esque crap. Anyone remember what phrase the nazis had above the concentration camps? "Work Makes You Free?" I hate to pull the godwin's law card here, but yeah, they literally had that phrase above their camps entrances. It didn't even originate from the nazis even, but some weimar era work program. But yeah, it was creepy crap.

Generally speaking there are two major conceptions of this idea. First, there's the more right wing version of this that literally comes down to the protestant work ethic. Basically, that God proscribed that we work as a punishment, and that work saves us from our sinful nature, gives structure and meaning to our lives, and that without it we would devolve to "degeneracy", or some nebulous state of sinful behavior in which we're unhappy, doing bad things, or simply not doing anything at all. Hard work and industriousness is a matter of character for these people, and people need work ethic instilled in them to save them from their otherwise sinful nature. These guys can screw off with this crap, as it literally is the same form of religious authoritarianism that I've opposed since I left the Christian faith. Christians and christian adjacent paternalists need to stop trying to impose their morals on everyone else's lives. Again, if you want to pursue that stuff yourself, that's fine, but you don't have a right to impose it on me.

 The second conception of this idea that I know of largely comes from the left, and seems common in "dignity of work" sentiments, in which work is a hallmark of being a good member of the community,  and that it's not fair to those that do work that others live off of their labor. It's hard to develop a proper counter to this one given the hegemony of the belief system on both the left and the right regarding work, but I have encountered to do so in the past.

First of all, let's remember that if all human social structures are subjective, and morality is subjective, then this statement is subjective. We can, in theory, divide up labor and property in any way we see fit, and what we consider fair is just a matter of what is considered socially acceptable. We could decide, for example, that the fairness principle here is overrided by another principle that is more important. In my case it's freedom. I believe that the freedom to be able to say no to forced labor is more important than the right of laborers to the "whole product" of their labor. I would argue that the only truly NECESSARY reason to have a system in which people are entitled to the product of their labor is....the necessity of such a system to promote incentives to work in the first place. Remember the common criticism from the right of "communism". A state in which people are not rewarded for work, and that people have no incentive to work because everyone is rewarded equally regardless. Why try to get an A if you get a C along with everyone else anyway? So work incentives are necessary. but that doesn't as van parijs has pointed out, mean that people are entitled to the full product of their labor. It could be argued, under an indepentarian, for example, framework of justice, that people shouldn't be forced to participate in the system at all, and that doing so is unjust. In a sense, UBI is compensation for an otherwise coercive social system that exists in the first place. 

Other things to take note of are ideas like, the fact that under my own system of social justice, that everyone would have the same option to not work, and while it is unjust to take from someone coerced to work and give to another, it is not unjust if everyone gets the same amount of UBI and everyone is free to make the same decisions. That's just another theory of justice you may or may not agree with.

I understand that someone who holds the system as it is dear is going to continue to reject this and not be convinced by it. They value work so much and people being entitled to their labor that they just can't be convinced otherwise. And at this point, I lack a desire to continue to waste breath arguing with such people. Just know this. A system in which everyone has to work for their sustenance is a system that will never get away from labor. It is a system where no matter how prosperous society is, and no matter how unnecessary the suffering may be, people will continue to work for a living. I really do believe we have a stockholm syndrome problem with work in our society. I dont think that we are born wanting to work within a capitalist society like we do, but that society imposes this value system and expectations on people from a young age, and that people have come to fall in love with their captors, thus perpetrating the system. Many people who hate work themselves might reinforce this system because it just seems unfair to them and the amount of work and suffering they've put into life that others are free from such obligation. Such a mentality is crab mentality and keeps us all trapped.

We can free ourselves from this simply by changing our values. If you choose not to do that, well, that's up to you. Just don't be surprised when you drag everyone down into the same crap you are in. Well, at least you have company, and misery loves company, doesn't it?

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The second topic I want to discuss in this post, is going back to the lazies vs crazies thing, since it was discussed in a previous post and I want to make some corrections on this. 

I know I shared this post with someone only for them to look down on me like I'm an idiot for how I framed the argument. Basically, I argue against philosophy and that it is a waste of time. I don't believe my core point here is invalid, but I do want to slightly refocus it. It's not so much that philosophy is a waste of time. It's the fact that I really don't see why van parijs spends so much time trying to justify not working within other peoples' value systems, rather than focusing more on making his own. One thing I notice, if I am to eventually write a book, is that in order to make it work, I need to lay down a lot of groundwork for how to make it work. I literally do need to go back to the christian worldview, and the garden of eden, and understanding of the times, my shift toward secular humanism, and rebuilding my worldview and going from there. it's like avatar, you can't really approach this stuff with a full mind, you need to empty it and then rebuild from the ground up. And that's why I tend to view a lot of mainstream philosophy as a waste. It's not that philosophy, specifically with ethics, is a waste of time, it's that people should not waste their time arguing within a moral system that is predisposed to be against their points. You can't adequately justify moving away from a system of forced labor if people accept the inherent rightness of people being forced to labor. Rather than trying to work with the assumptions of other people, and trying to contort myself trying to meet them where they are in their crappy little value systems I'd rather just throw out the window....I'd rather just throw them out the window. It's like what I said the other day with the reciprocity objection. I'd rather not fight the objection head on, but instead invalidate the entire underlying belief system that the objection lies on, and just start over. After all, my views are closer to say, Camus' absurdism, where I just view the world from a perspective of complete and utter purposelessness, and I have come to embrace it. I dont need the paternalists' ideas of what my "good life" should be to be happy. I'd rather be left alone to live within my own value system. I view being forced to work in their system as the equivalent of sisyphus being forced to roll the rock up the hill for all eternity. Why are we rolling rocks up a hill? Why can't be we do something else. For as much as I give the christians crap, at least they rightly recognize work as a punishment for sin, rather than it being valid in some perfect world. They accept work because they view this world as fallen, and humans as sinful, and that's just how the world works. I might disagree with their larger worldview, but at least they do recognize the inherent unpleasantness of the topic. The point is if this world isn't fallen, and there isn't an inherent purpose to it all, then maybe we shouldn't be forced to live like this, and maybe a worldview based on freedom is a better and more ethical route to take. 

Now, onto the lazies vs crazies. There are a couple things I want to add onto my previous post. I do want to address the issue of compromise and the two factions wanting to force their worldview on the other. As a "lazy", I view the crazies of wanting to force their work happy culture on me against my will, forcing me to live according to their principles. And I have noticed, in the past year or two, as I evolve my philosophy into the covid and post covid eras, that a lot of people are crazies. People SCREAMED at the idea of not being able to work for the purpose of saving people from a deadly disease, and screamed to open up the economy, even if it means grandma dies. In the post covid economy, these guys come off as entitled jerks screaming about how people should be forced to work to serve them middle class luxuries they're tired of going without. As you can tell, I don't view crazies very favorably. They are a bunch of self entitled jerks who literally do act entitled to the labor of another. Even if they pay for said labor via capitalism, they still believe in coercing people to work in the first place. And I view that as unjust. While I will cede the work issue in the face of practicality and needing some people to work for society to function at all, we DID have a functioning society during covid. We separated labor into "essential" and "nonessential", with most of the stuff not being done being nonessential. You dont need movie theaters and amusement parks and sunday brunches at IHOP and nail salons to survive. Those are just nice to haves. But the crazies do see fit to force their views on others, forcing them to serve them goods and services against their will for sub par wages. I view that as inherently unjust.

At the same time, crazies view being taxed to provide for the lazies to be lazy is unjust. Again, crazies gonna crazy, but honestly, isn't a UBI, if anything, the compromise? The equivalent of the true "lazy" world would be the strawman of communism the right throws around. No one has to work, there's no incentive to working, and no one works. And people are denied the opportunity to work altogether. While I do view a future laborless society as utopia if we can figure out the mechanics of such a thing, I understand that this is not going to be acceptable. I really don't, barring a life threatening pandemic, want to deny people the opportunity to work, or force people to work. I still view a lot of labor as socially useful, and that it's good for people to do it. I just don't want them to be FORCED to do it, if it's not itself needed for a functioning society. You know? In a sense, the compromise IS UBI. You can work, and it's socially accepted and even incentivized that you can, but you don't HAVE to. UBI is, in the more indepentarian framework at least, intended just to be a bottom, it's not intended to replace all incentive to work. After all, we still work and we still need labor.

This idea actually goes against what a lot of what even more anti UBI advocates support. Van Parijs in his views supported, in the chapter I just read, a UBI funded with taxation at literal laffer curve level. He supports a UBI as high as can be sustained. I understand that incentives are a bit more subjective and I'm willing just to get the foot in the door at subsistence level for now. I'm not opposed to larger UBIs down the road, but understanding the fact that many people still adopt the religion of work in our society, I do understand a need to compromise. 

I also had a debate with UBI activist Alex Howlett on reddit earlier this year in which we had a discussion that largely came down to this. He seemed to actively want to suppress work incentive as much as possible by providing a UBI so high that most people wouldnt want to work, thus destroying the need for labor that way. He also seemed to write off a lot of labor not only as nonessential, but not useful, although I did notice that in the debate, he seemed to define not necessary work as work not contributing to GDP. A lot of work does do useful things and does contribute to GDP even if not necessary, so I disagreed with him there. I do not agree with the idea of actively suppressing the work ethic and going so far in the "lazy" direction that it leads to stagnating or even negative growth. Rather, I seek a balance. While as a "lazy" myself, I do sympathize with the likes of Howlett and Van Parijs in trying to make UBI as high as possible and reduce work's influence on our lives as much as possible, I understand, given the realities of the political situation in the US, that that's going to be a goal better left to the future. If we tried to force that now, the right would scream we're trying to force our way of life on people, and they would probably win that argument. Pushing too hard could actually undermine our goals. I mean, if politics is like a pendulum, pushing too hard one way can lead to a backlash the other way. I recognize there are practical limits to what can be done in the current environment and UBI is already enough of a hard sell. While this is a topic I would like to see actively discussed and debated in the future, and I would ideally say that I would like to see people abandon work altogether, I understand it's going to take some level of societal deprogramming first before we can actually push for that. While I am doing my part with advocating for my ideals here and in whatever future book I write, if I go in that direction, I do understand at some point compromise may be necessary, and I would say this is where I call it. So for now, I will push only for a subsistence level UBI while keeping capitalism's incentive structure and work ethic largely intact, opening the door for further progress to be made in this direction, but not forcing it. Future generations, if you want to do away with work altogether, go ahead and do so if it's feasible, anything I propose now in 2022 is not necessarily going to be valid 50-100 years or now or further in the future. I'm just trying to move society in the direction I can from where it's at here in the early 21st century. 

With that said, some of what I wrote is potentially redundant given my past article, but I did thing that many of the corrections/additions I made here are valuable discussions to have.

Discussing more of Van Parij's book: the history of UBI

 So, i'm still reading "A Radical Proposal for a Free and a Sane Society" and a lot of it resonates, and I have a lot to say about it, that might go into the premise of where my head is at lately with the idea of going into my own book on UBI. In the chapter, I just read, he went into the history of the subject. 

And of course, the first forms of UBI were ironically based on Christianity. That's common in western society. A lot of our old ideals actually do seem to trace themselves back to Christianity in some form or another. But in this sense, the first UBI type proposals seemed almost, georgist in nature. In other words the principles george used to argue for his ideology seem explicitly based on this Christian worldview. 

In particular, a lot of early advocates like Thomas paine argued for an unconditional income drawn from land rents. Basically, the God made the earth so no one is entitled to profit from the earth, but because we're all called to labor...well....you gotta work. But hey, here's an unconditional income drawn from land rents. 

And this...is actually why i tend to dislike georgism. It still has this right libertarian labor fixation and people being entitled to the product of their labor in an ideologically dogmatic way (whereas I support the principle from a perspective of pragmatism and incentives to work, and am, as a result a lot more flexible in the implementation of this idea), but it does actually cede that the land belongs to no one. But then ownership of land seems to be demonized in itself where instead of people being taxed based on their ability to pay, which is, IMO a lot less freedom reducing, they tax based on ownership of land. So a business that isnt very land intensive and maybe owns one corporate office in Delaware somewhere barely pays any taxes, but they're coming for the old people on social security or UBI who happen to own their own home and dare to want to live in it. Generally speaking, a UBI on these principles just doesnt have good results, it doesnt tax people who are wealthy enough to bear the tax, but it does tax people based on their ownership of a fixed resource, even if their ownership isn't excessive and for personal use. Dont get me wrong, I can kind of sort of get behind georgist principles in terms of actually attempting to profit off of land, ie, renting out property for profit, or alternatively buying up homes to "house flip" and sell them for a profit. Or even just, hogging land ownership by using far in excess of what can be defined as one's "fair share". I mean those guys you can tax, but many proponents of these kinds of ideas are a bit too ideological and indiscriminate in their ideology. One thing I notice about my own approach to politics is that while I have my own ideology, I also tend to be far more practical where instead of getting stuck in my own head about right and wrong regardless for how it actually affects people, I actually tend to focus on the consequences. I can, in theory, get behind georgist ideas, but in terms of putting UBI or social libertarian ideas into practice, I ultimately am a policy nerd who focuses more on HOW to actually get the results I actually want. I really don't know how to reconcile this with my philosophy at this time, although if I develop this idea further for some sort of book, it might be worth trying to put it into words. 

Anyway, then as time went on, UBI started actually taking quite a bit of an "indepentarian", or what could be later defined as "indepentarian." At the time, it was called "Fourierism". Basically this ideology recognizes that the property rights system is oppressive and that it robs people of their liberty and forces people to work for others in order to survive, and that a UBI is needed to free people from it. To deal with the "but no one would work" objection, they responded, much like I would, that people would instead work for "pocket money" and would work for higher standards of living, and that if people chose not to work at all, they'd just get the bare minimum.

These kinds of ideas were ironically pushed in opposition of socialism, and proponents were people like John Stuart Mill (an early influence of my current views), and Charles Fourier, who the idea is named after.I find this interesting given how much socialists seem to have a work fetish and how I have opposition with them today because of it. I mean, for all of the good observations they sometimes make about work in a modern capitalist context, they literally can't seem to get away from the idea that people be forced to work for their subsistence, holding similar ideas to the fundamentalist christians whom I despise and who my own worldview was made out of opposition of. 

While I'm familiar with much of the American debates about UBI in the 1960s and 1970s and how work fetishization won out over progress, thus leading to the modern set of problems I now rail against in my own views, I was not as aware that the British debated it after WWI in a serious way, with people like Bertrand Russell supporting the idea. Sadly, it seems that the more traditional forms of welfare won out, in the form of the Beverridge system that later became the model for the UK and as we know from the Nordic Theory of everything, much of Scandinavia too. 

As I said, and should be widely known on this blog, the US discussed the idea in the 1960s between Nixon and McGovern, but it basically lost out because there was opposition across the political spectrum for various reasons, and people just can't seem to get over this weird freaking idea that work has such much dignity that you should be forced to do it under the threat of starvation.

And of course, the issue has been discussed in Europe in decades since, but obviously, the modern social democratic left and their obsession with work and labor opposes the idea because once again, they can't get over the labor fetish.

Honestly, it's really frustrating seeing the left act in such a way. I know a lot of left wing ideas in the past criticizing capitalism are what led to the rise of many of the schools of thought discussed here. Particularly more anarchist ideas than socialist. But because modern liberalism is dominated by reciprocity, leftism seems to dogmatically virtue signal the value to work as much as your typical biblical literalist, these ideas have always been a minority, and always end up just popping up every few decades, only to die out as another more "jobist" status quo reaches a dominant position instead. I used to see reaganism and the biblical literalism attached to it as the problem, but I now know the problem with the protestant work ethic is a lot more pervasive in modern western culture and that both liberals and leftists are just as bad with it in their own ways. And that's kind of why I feel like a freaking alien politically these days, and I end up having to take shots all up and down the spectrum, from the far right to the far left to everything in between. While on a traditional political spectrum I am closer to a social democrat, I would consider myself a social libertarian on the basis that I really dont have these authoritarian jobist tendencies and would like to see a "libertarian form of social democracy" that brings "real freedom for all" as Van parijs would say, or "the right to say no" as Widerquist would say. Social libertarianism truly is unique from these other schools of thought, and while there are similarities there are obvious differences too. And I feel like I'm in a free for all against all of them when discussing politics online or alternatively in person.