Universal Basic Income

Of course many people would rather work 4 days instead of 5. 3 instead of 4. We have a mobility problem, and we have a poorly skilled nation that has become more and more Americanised in its laziness. I think such a scheme which looks like and feels like a free handout wouldn't encourage anything other than bigger TV's, fatter backsides and a further dumbing down of our society.

Personally, I think it would increase stigma. You'd have people being given the same as others and not contributing to tax take, some not doing anything at all, and some potentially doing "niceties". That would really hack me off to see people being given free money and throwing it away. How do you set the amount? How do you weight it? £500 a month in Barnsley would go a long way to seeing you sorted for covering many average bills. £500 in London might just about cover your ins being collected. So immediately it has to be changed for the locality and its universalness is gone.

 

Yes. NHS starts the process, then refers you for the private cover, tales some stress over a vital service for people who would go untreated otherwise. Bin free bus passes for those who can afford it. Bin free tv licenses for those who can afford it. Its a fundamental waste of money to give to those who don't need something. And think of the even worse aspect. You spend all this money, people get accustomed to it... then when it is proven to fail, how do you take all this money off people and rebalance back to merit and true need. It would be carnage.

 

And you think this would incentivise people?

 

To do.... what exactly?

 

That's a hugely pessimistic view of the world and one that is very anchored in a job being the primary provider of someones self worth. If anything work is the biggest barrier to self improvement for so many people. Particular in our post-industrialised society that has become a service sector job economy - the vast majority of which will have ceased to exist in 10 years time.

 

Get out of the welfare trap, for example.

 

A pessimistic view based on seeing people in our country. If you gave most of our population one day off, it would be frittered. Some may use it for "good", most would watch a bit more, smoke a bit more, eat a bit more, sedate a bit more. Sadly, that's just how our society has shifted in the last few decades.

 

I don't think being paid £500 a month to do nothing would, absolutely not.

 

Or to look at it from your perspective wouldn't it encourage entrepreneurship, where people gave the certainty of a basic salary to allow them to take risks, sparking a whole new wave of innovation and growth?

 

No. Comfort doesn't generally spark innovation or entrepreneurship in my experience. For anyone who has been in business, their efforts multiply when they have to put food on the table.

 

That wasn't the question as well you know. I asked if you thought your vision of the end of non-means tested benefits and health care would incentivise people to escape the welfare trap.

 

I'm not sure it should be society's role to judge what constitutes being frittered. People's time would be personal choice, but without the judgement as we would all be given that exact same personal choice through universal income. Why would you care how someone chooses to spend their time?

 

I believe in means testing. I don't believe in non means testing.

 

So at the risk of sounding like Jeremy Paxman do you think your vision of the end of non-means tested benefits and health care would incentivise people to escape the welfare trap?

 

But here the £500 is still a benefit. And if the rich are being taxed more, you could see that it more than nets off their rewards for effort and risk. If we shift to an automated where people aren't needed largely... why should a big business essentially pay the fewer people it has well, to subsidise people sat on their behinds? Can you not see how much resentment that would create? And whats the incentive for a company to based in a country that has that philosophy? I think a country would be going to the IMF very very swiftly.... and that's even if Brexit didn't happen,

The big question is what do people do when we've given ourselves over to AI... and at what time is population unsustainable to maintain an environment that is hospitable and allows us to feed ourselves? Not to mention what do we then do about it?

 

I DONT believe in means testing. I don't want any system that isn't means tested. Just to clarify, since you didn't get that the first time.

 

I did get that. I'm not asking you what you want. I'm asking if you think your alternative to the current system where certain benefits and health care are not means tested would incentivise people to escape the welfare trap.

 

I don't have an alternative. Youre asking me if a system I don't favour would let people escape a welfare life. I want the system to be means tested. I don't know how I can be any clearer on this.

 

We don't means test those benefits today (NHS care, free TV licenses, bus passes). You proposed they be means tested. That's the alternative you're proposing. I'm asking you if you think that alternative would incentivise people to escape the welfare trap.

 

Because without this payment society breaks down. If you remove the opportunity for people to work you have to replace it with something else. The alternative is large scale disenfranchisement of large swathes of society analagous to what happened in regions that mined coal and made steel.