Sigh. £48 / week is not UBI. $500 a week to a hand picked group of 200 people is not UBI either. All these so called trials are rather meaningless. And if UBI ends up being the same amount as being on the dole, with the same amount being given to working people but taken away again in extra taxes, then it’ll change very little. Except a few more people choosing not to work at all (meaning they’ll work gigs off the books) if it basically amounts to dole money without any questions asked. Wh
There is nothing new about UBI. There are many worldwide examples of it over the centuries. Here in America, Alaskans get it, many of our native Indian tribes have some form of it, the Earned Income Tax Credit was a compromise form of it we added when we had this same discussion again in the 70s, and it has been actively discussed as long ago as 1797 when one of our most vocal founders, Thomas Paine, argued for something similar. In other parts of the world there are several countries that enjoy it to some
If it's *your* house - i.e. if you live in it, then you're not a landlord.
If you are a landlord, that means you're benefiting from a predatory social system that keeps poor people poor through the artificial inflation of property prices. There's a reason rentier capitalism is almost universally sneered at.
In a way it's kind of like inheritance taxes - they're not there to punish the wealthy - they're there because without them, within a few generations the wealthy will own everything.
Low or close to zero interest rates have screwed people over. It has caused a massive appreciation of any non-perishable asset - housing, stocks, gold, land, everything that doesn't go bad and comes in limited supply. Low interest rates have priced young people out of the housing market. They also made building rental apartments a bad investment because rents are capped by salaries. What is scary, the media are not talking about it. Like the problem didn't exist.
There is nothing new about UBI. There are many worldwide examples of it over the centuries. Here in America, Alaskans get it, many of our native Indian tribes have some form of it, the Earned Income Tax Credit was a compromise form of it we added when we had this same discussion again in the 70s, and it has been actively discussed as long ago as 1797 when one of our most vocal founders, Thomas Paine, argued for something similar. In other parts of the world there are several countries that enjoy it to some
If it's *your* house - i.e. if you live in it, then you're not a landlord.
If you are a landlord, that means you're benefiting from a predatory social system that keeps poor people poor through the artificial inflation of property prices. There's a reason rentier capitalism is almost universally sneered at.
In a way it's kind of like inheritance taxes - they're not there to punish the wealthy - they're there because without them, within a few generations the wealthy will own everything.
Every capitalist (and
Low or close to zero interest rates have screwed people over. It has caused a massive appreciation of any non-perishable asset - housing, stocks, gold, land, everything that doesn't go bad and comes in limited supply. Low interest rates have priced young people out of the housing market. They also made building rental apartments a bad investment because rents are capped by salaries. What is scary, the media are not talking about it. Like the problem didn't exist.
Immigration into Western Europe has also been