>reckong

Time for bed.

I'm very interested in the first part of that. To be blunt, I think a basic universal income is one of those ideas that seem absurd now, but will be considered a basic human right in the future.

>>51755
>I think a basic universal income is one of those ideas that seem absurd now, but will be considered a basic human right in the future.
Sure, after everyone in the third world is on the same economic scale as the rest of us. Because that's going to happen soon.

>>51756

The third world doesn't count, basically. Things we've considered basic human rights for a hundred years are out the window in bongo bongo land.

>>51755
I don't know about 'basic human right', for reasons that >>51756 is hinting at, but I can see it becoming increasingly necessary in developed societies as not just traditional labour, but many fields of work become obsolete with advancing technology.

That's a lot.

Rest in peace, Switzerland.

Dear OP,

Thanks for the tip off. I am now going to hide the thread as I can't be arsed to deal with economic illerates, and this is /pol/.

Can I move there and get the money?

>>51761
What's the cost of living like there? I remember them making a fuss about minarets, so I imagine they have relatively strict immigration controls to stop them getting flooded with sponging gypsies.

Green Party lad here. This is absolutely awesome.

>>51753
Wouldn't it make a huge impact on prices, though? Sounds outright insane.

>>51764

If the prices go up, it makes no difference, because the money will just recirculate back into the population. In any case, even if prices are lower, those on a lower income couldn't afford them anyway, which is why the change is needed.

>>51763

Green party are good and all but too... middle claaaahs. Join the proper socialists, lad. Not the SWP, mind.

>>51767
Oh here we go. Who are the 'proper socialists', again? The People's Front of Judea, I presume?

>>51768
The Socialist party?

That's more than my mum earns, why should she work anymore?

>>51769
Proletkult.
I remember a time back in the mid '80s when the in-thing with Militant and SWP (and WRP before all the Delta-ing came out) youngsters was to look as close to Brecht as possible. Now it's the same with Trotsky or an East German.

Join the LRC or something.

I support this, since the natural place for most of Switzerlands multinationals to relocate to would be Britain. Silly Swiss.

>>51770
Because she enjoys doing a job and contributing to the well-being of others rather than sitting on her arse. That's the only reason anyone should be working, not for money.

>>51771
Let's go Trotspotting!
http://libcom.org/blog/trotspotting-everything-you-always-wanted-know-about-sects-were-afraid-ask-18092009

The degree to which the left-wing is splintered is fucking ludicrous. The Greens are the biggest truly left-wing movement and I'm sticking with them.

>>51785

Someone has to clean the bogs. Nobody wants to clean the bogs. Society currently has a pretty good way of finding someone to clean the bogs - economic necessity. How does a society in which nobody needs to work solve the problem of bog-cleaning and equally unpleasant work?

To give a practical example, a large proportion of the soft fruit crop in the UK simply rots in the fields, because there aren't enough pickers. The Eastern Europeans who do most of the fruit picking in this country earn well above minimum wage, but the locals just can't be arsed getting up at 5am to go and pick blackcurrants.

>>51787

Simple answer. Unpleasant jobs should be paid better than the pleasant and desirable ones with high status. Why should the hard and messy jobs be paid the worst? This has always been a bad system which does not reward people properly.

>>51788
Because hard work or desirability isn't a measure of how useful something actually is, the supply of labour that's capable of doing it is. If nobody actually wanted to clean toilets then the wages would be higher.

>>51787
Bog cleaning jobs would start paying higher salaries, and it would be attractive.

>>51785
>Because she enjoys doing a job and contributing to the well-being of others rather than sitting on her arse.
Who said she'd be sitting on her arse? Fuck you for pushing your sense of entitlement on my mum.

>>51789

>If nobody actually wanted to clean toilets


Implying people actually want to do it? Seriously lad, sort yourself out. You've lost grip of reality.

>>51793
Clearly they do, because they do.

>>51787

Easy. Superloos and Fetlife.

>>51788

Economics works on supply and demand not on arbitrary measures of 'desirability'. Unless you are physically disabled anyone is capable of doing menial work - even without a basic grasp of numeracy or literacy. However higher paid jobs are almost always tied to skills that are increasingly rare in the workforce and often require some form of higher education or training.

Let's say you think this is unfair and imagine an ideal benevolent government can control things to make pay inversely proportional to desirability. Ignoring the fact that ideally benevolent governments are in the same category as infinite energy sources of 'things that cannot physically exist', how do you define a by definition subjective quality like desirability? For example, I would absolutely despise any job that required waking up before 6am whereas for some people this would be fine so long as they don't have to work with the public (for example say). My point being one man's ideally desirable job isn't necessarily another's.

>>51796

Except, you know, all those economists who have dismissed Supply and Demand as bollocks without any application in the real world and are calling for it, along with a hell of a lot more of the Dismal Science to be dropped from textbooks. How is that PPE coming along lad? Second year treating you well?

>>51796

And I refer you to >>51795.

>>51796
>Economics works on supply and demand
>not on arbitrary measures

Oh lad.

>>51797
>all those economists who have dismissed Supply and Demand as bollocks without any application in the real world

It's as obvious as evolution, are we really going to go down this route?

>>51800
Supply and demand aren't arbitrary, nobody just chooses a supply and chooses a demand.

>>51801
>>51802

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/10/economics-lecturers-accused-university-courses
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/11/university-economics-teaching-overhaul

I know the Telegraph covered this as well, but am struggling to track it down.

>>51804

Both articles are complete fiction. The most glaring factual error is that Michael Joffe is cited in both articles as professor of economics at ICL, when in fact he is neither an economist nor a professor. He is a retired reader in biology, who holds no economic qualifications and has never published a paper on economics in any known journal.

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/collegedirectory/index.asp?PeopleID=1038844
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=michael+joffe

>>51805

Fine. I'll accept your digging. So why have three Nobel laureates in Economics come out repeatedly over the past couple of years slating "Economic Science"? I am cooking at the mo, so apologies for not being able to pull stuff up - Google is not being very helpful.

>>51805
Wrong.
http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/5/873.abstract?sid=a67d0319-274c-477d-b27e-e359d9d824e6

That took about a minute of looking.

Try harder next time please.

>>51804
>The profession has been criticised for its adherence to models of a free market that claim to show demand and supply continually rebalancing over relatively short periods of time – in contrast to the decade-long mismatches that came ahead of the banking crash in key markets such as housing and exotic derivatives, where asset bubbles ballooned.

I'm going to assume this is the sum total of evidence you have proposed for the motion that "supply and demand is bollocks", seeing as I found no reference to neither supply nor demand in the Guardian article.

Obviously real life isn't going to perfectly follow a simple model. The above quoted text isn't claiming at all that the idea of supply and demand is false - it is saying that there are additional kinetic factors involved in the rebalancing.

It's analagous to how diamond doesn't spontaneously turn into the more stable graphite under standard conditions - the kinetics are far too slow and we need to consider non-equilibrium effects, not throw the entirety of thermodynamics (cf supply and demand) out the window.

>>51805
As a further aid to you, undergraduatelad, google scholar is bollocks (well, not completely useless but you can't rely on it) and you're much better off just doing it the slow way.

JSTOR is shit too, just letting you know.

>>51808

You are not replying to who you think you are replying to. Feel free to continue, it is always fucking hilarious to watch a Unilad try and defend psuedo-science. Or, you could start a thread in /IQ/ regarding the TOP BANTZ you are currently having.

>>51810

Well I have now found all three laureates. Two minutes. I will leave it to Unilad to track them down however, his research skills seem a tad lacking. And I have apple and sausage stew to eat.

>>51810
I have no time for TOP BANTS I'm working.

>>51811
You high?

>>51802
Pretending that two concepts which are dependent on each other are easily definable and exist in a vacuum is indeed rather arbitrary. That's why even the Nobel committee has recognised the importance of behavioural economics.

>>51767
'Green World' had some statistics about party membership which suggests otherwise. Unfortunately I can't remember which issue it was in.

>>51770>>51787

These are not benefits.

If you live under a system where you receive an unconditional income, and then choose to work, you now are in receipt of two incomes.

In a way that provides actually far more of an incentive to work than do typical current-day welfare systems.

>>52194

The basic income idea also eliminates the huge requirements and costs of administration as all you need to see is a pulse, basically. It also wipes out virtually all fraud issues and incentives to lie in this area. It would greatly encourage people to work, especially part time as no longer would there be clashes and worries about "declaring" it or the endless problems and hassle of signing off and on or the worry about losing benefits and the steady income and safety net for a potentially short term risky job. I really do think this might be a future foundation of the next big step in the development and improvement of society.

>>52195
How does it eliminate fraud? What's to stop someone pretending to be several people and claiming several incomes?

Anarchylad approves of a basic living income. It wouldn't be anarchism, but one of the founding notions in anarchist theory is that every individual has a right to the means of subsistence. This originally meant land for peasant farmers, in a nutshell, but a guaranteed basic income in a capitalist society is a step in that direction.

>>52196

Is that the only fraud that happens today then? Well that is a surprise. Don't be silly.

What you describe is one of the most extreme and far more difficult than most and also easier to deal with. That is the simple reality of things.

I am both impressed and amazed about the lack of "what about freeloaders" in this thread. Well done lads. I am...incredibly impressed.

Anyway, I thought I would paraphrase my friend on the issue anyway: "if someone wants to spend the rest of their life in a bedsit, lying in bed all day, and seating baked beans, then fine. I believe they need mental help, but if they really do, fuck 'em. I pity them, but that's fine with me. Their drain on our resources will be miniscule."

>>52199
>Their drain on our resources will be miniscule."
'miniscule' being equal to or greater than my tax money, meaning I am paying for their lifestyle and they're not paying for mine.

>>52199
> if someone wants to spend the rest of their life in a bedsit, lying in bed all day, and seating baked beans, then fine. I believe they need mental help, but if they really do, fuck 'em. I pity them, but that's fine with me.
Is your friend by any chance Al Murray, pub landlord?
Anyway, there's only one proper response to that sort of talk...

https://www.youtube.com/v/RaYonB4G40c

Also, I'd like to add
> seating baked beans
This made me imagine a lunatic carefully arranging baked beans around the house, some in little chairs, some leaning casually against the wall, a whole tableau of them dotted around his flat. Which would be mental.

>>52200

3/10 SEE ME

>>52203

Keynes, please go.

>>52199
Those are my feelings exactly. I hate those right-wingers who identify a tiny proportion of the population who have no real wish to contribute to society, and then use that as an excuse to slash public services for all users, legitimate or not. It's illogical.

>>52205

And indeed, utter drivel. The vast, and I really do mean vast, majority of the population like to do productive things during their day. It really does expose a mix of mental illness and sheer laziness on the behalf of those who seem to think that THE DREAM is to sit around on their arse all day.

>>52205
It's not illogical, it's a way of making a problem seem much larger than it actually is, therefore making it a more convincing argument. People are more concerned about the overall tax burden than just a few individuals.

>>52207

Hmm...kinda, kinda not. And the thread was about a base income.

>>52207

Really is dumb when you find about how the financial system works. Banks lending out more money than they have, getting more back in interest, and so on. Most tax is paid by the richest, who, with no mortgage or rent left to pay, benefit disproportionately from the financial system.

>>52205

Except that if everyone in Britain were given £1700 a month tax free for the rest of their days, why the fuck would you bother doing menial work? I work 40 hours a week for £1400 a month pre tax. I sure as hell wouldnt be getting up for that if I made £20k a year (40k with a missus) . Now if the money was only given to the employed and thus people were forced into work to claim it as long as you did a full working week, I would agree. It would make the money worth spending as it would ignite the industries that have fallen since the Crunch since people would be buying and upgrading their houses with the extra money since £1700 a month is a decent mortgage payer, especially if you work since you would only be paying the normal bills ontop and leaving you a sizable wage.

Hell, allow students to claim it too but only under the guise of paying a student loan and lodgings so that they are free to learn and work with no fear of debt.

Obviously only natives can apply to stop the johnny foreigner claiming it but it would cause the British economy to explode into a frenzy of consumption and production.

>>52367
People who do menial work would end up getting paid more than those that just sit on their arse all day long.

Why do you like to keep this system? Why do you feel like you need to force people to do menial work?

>>52367

While I disagree slightly with the start of your post (not sure where 1700 a month cmomes from, but maybe I am missing something) you are bang on when it comes to consumption and production.

This highlights what is so wrong with our current governments policies - less tax for the wealthy, paid for by removing cash from the poor. Poor people spend all their money. Because they are poor. Rich people don't because they already are spending a certain portion and don't need to spend more. If we upped benefit the economy would notice it immediately. Or minium wage. Or both.

Sage because I am sick and rambling.

"Give everyone money" is on par with "why don't they just make a trillion pound coin"

>>52367
>Except that if everyone in Britain were given £1700 a month tax free for the rest of their days, why the fuck would you bother doing menial work?
Exactly. Employers would then have difficulty filling those positions and consequently, as a Tory minister correctly pointed out this week, they'd have to pay more.

People are afraid of this idea mostly because of the constant demonising and brainwashing by the media in recent years. I can remember Brooker and others highlighting how ridiculous it has got. The suggestion mentioned by the OP is the best idea to move society forward and improve the lot of the vast majority.

Have they voted on this yet?

>>52370

Your brain is on a par with a peanut.

>>52370
What do you think is sitting in the vaults of Scottish banks?

>>52375
>What is inflation

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>52376
An inflatable trillion pound coin?

>>52368

Except for the fact that working doesnt really pay for a single man's life. Rent is too high, bills too expensive and so on for a man on a 40 hour minimum wage job to live solo. However, someone on the dole will have his bills paid, rent scuppered and all at the expense of the tax payer for no effort other than 1 visit to the job office once every 2 weeks.

Were you to make people WANT to work to get their government issued balancer, people would work. They would do those shitty menial jobs. It would promote the economy of the nation and increase industrial investment in the nation as the demand for jobs rises and businesses seek to capitalise on cheap wages set by the government booster.

The benefit lifers would still get their rent and such paid but instead of setting aside extra money, it would instead come from their government issued money and thus remove bureacracy.

>>52370

Not really. Promoting spending of wealth is how you break out of economic slumps and promote industrial growth especially if you get said 'free cash' from taxing international imports of otherwise domestically produced goods.

I personally see this not so much as free money but as properly allocated benefit funding. Removal of things like tax credits, charity tax breaks, housing credit etc etc and lumping it into a single lump sum of money per month for every person who earns under a certain amount of money (no point giving Wayne Rooney the cash after all) would either give better value for money as it isnt wasted on bureacracy and moving between multiple accounts or at least better allocation as people decide what to spend it on.

People who mindlessly spend money will always do so and people who horde it will also do so as well.

>>52378

You appear to be arguing at cross purposes again lad. Long lunch, was it?

>>52378
I don't know what you are trying to say any more. Is this IDS? Hi IDS.

>>52387
If it is indeed IDS, I'd tell him that it's a shame to see a rare example of someone in politics talking actual sense only to go and get it so monumentally wrong.

Wouldn't this cause the cost of housing to skyrocket? Greedy homeowners and landlords and all that.

In a few decades we've gone from the situation where married women could afford to stay at home and raise the kids to now having little option but to go out and work because the norm of dual household incomes has helped greatly push up the cost of living.

>>52387
Basic income isn't the same as universal credit, far from it.

>>52404

Lampposts.

>>52404

Hells bells, no homelessness would make house prices rise? How will all the people in homes cope?

>>51787

>How does a society in which nobody needs to work solve the problem of bog-cleaning and equally unpleasant work?

The problem solves itself.

Consider this- We have 7.1% unemployment in this country right now. If nobody actually NEEDED to work, do you think that figure would rise or lower?

It's worth thinking about. The way our economy currently works is that earning minimum wage, you have to work between 40 and 50 hours a week just to survive. That's 50 hours of labour you are providing at the absolute rock bottom, bargain rate. Due to the fact that a) there are a limited number of employment opportunities available at any one time, b) the number of people seeking employment is higher than the number of positions available, and c) you occupy this position full time, by economic necessity, we can conclude that by being employed full time at minimum wage, you are depriving others of a job.

Imagine you earned £1700 a month. Suddenly, you no longer need to do that menial, degrading, minimum wage job. Or at least, you no longer need to do it for 40 hours a week. You can just go in on Mondays and spend the rest of the week learning a musical instrument. You'll still be paid for the work you do, so it's pretty likely that you will; adjustments and counterbalances would mean that the citizen's wage essentially becomes a very generous pocket money, not enough to live luxuriantly. This would mean that overall, there are in fat more employment opportunities to go round. More people, as a result, would be in work, and less of them unemployed.

So let's go back to your hypothetical bog cleaner. You couldn't find anyone to do it full time, like you can now; some poor middle aged single mother forced to take up the apron and marigolds of shame to support her children. Instead she can come in and do it a couple of days a week to bring in a bit of money to treat the kids to a weekend out. Somebody else will do it the other days- Menial jobs are much, much less unappealing if you only have to do them on occasion.

TL;DR Why aren't we at this point already? Surely it would be healthier for the economy to have more people sharing what jobs there are? Why must people still work backbreaking full-time menial roles when there is clearly a large surplus of labour?

>>52986
Would this unconditional income be taxed? Getting £1,700 per month from the government is the equivalent of a gross salary of just under £26k (not far off the average UK salary of £26,500). Also, for curiosity's sake, how much does someone on minimum wage presently get from the government in the form of tax credits and the like?

>>52987

Well I'm on minimum wage and get fuck all.

You have to have a kid or meet other conditions; young single people are shit out of luck.

>>52986

It'd be as big a change as the industrial revolution or the introduction of agriculture. It'd have tremendously positive impact culturally and socially. I can see people blossoming under it. I think it would improve work ethic if people don't resent these jobs and feel it is their choice - something they desire to do for the desired results, rather than the modern day gulags and threats. Instead of middle and working classes paddling furiously to avoid drowing they'll have room to breathe and develop beyond the blinkered work-buy-die tunnel so many feel trapped in. The universal nature of it is key. Even systems like an OAP bus pass work better that way and are resented by the wealthiest far less if they know in their heart that at any moment they too can enjoy the benefits of the system and that it is by choice and not seemingly unfair or arbritrary rules and qualifiers that they do not. Oddly I've known one or two very wealthy and upper class that were avid bus pass users too.

>>52989

I feel sorry for you and anyone else stuck on that pittance. It is a woeful sum. The minimum wage has gone from an idea to improve people's lot by increasing wages and slightly balancing equality to leaving them behind with pennies and an excuse to do nothing more.

>>52992
Except that's not true. The minimum wage has risen about 25% since it was introduced and that's inflation adjusted.

>>52999

Oh how I laughed. 10/10

>>53000
Ok.

>Swiss to vote in referendum on world's highest minimum wage
>The proposal is for a 22 Swiss francs (£14.70) an hour and if voted through it would put a salary floor under the average 35-hour week of more than £27,000

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/16/swiss-vote-referendum-world-highest-minimum-wage-manufacturing

>>55181
Fucking hell. Those crazy Swiss, you'll never guess what they'll think of next.

>>55182
The vote is today, the BBC article on it (which says the minimum full time salary would be £32k) says it's likely to be rejected. This line sounds familiar, though:

>The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says that a key element of the campaign in favour of a minimum wage is the argument that the Swiss welfare system is being forced to subsidise businesses which refuse to pay a living wage.

>>55183
I hope it passes, and we take up all their business.

The Greens want to introduce a £72 a week universal Citizen's Income. Apparently to fund this they want to scrap the income tax personal allowance, JSA, child benefit, tax credits, etc. and they'll raise the basic rate of tax to 30% and make 12% National Insurance payable on all income, rather than having the first £153 of weekly income NI free as at present.

It doesn't seem very practical and thought through to me.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/27/green-party-citizens-income-policy-hits-poor

God I love the Greens.

>>59415 here again.

Doing a quick calculation to see the practicalities of it:

Someone on £20,000 a year would lose their income tax allowance of £10,500 (from April) so that's £3,150 at 30%, plus an extra £950 on the rest of their income that's now taxed 10% higher. The additional NI would work out at about £955, meaning they'd be paying an extra £5,055 to receive a £3,744 Citizen's Income. No idea if they'd also lose tax credits and the like, assume they would if they had kids.

>>59415
Funny how you bumped this as soon as the news broke that it might not work so that you can claim you didn't think it would work all along! The Greens are an evidence based party and they will incorporate this new evidence into their policy. The CIT has provided numerous costed analyses of the policy in the past, but I presume you didn't decide it 'wasn't well thought out' when reading one of those.

>>59418
Oh Greenlad.

>The Greens are an evidence based party

Fjordable mirth.

>>59418
I bumped it now because this is the first I've heard of it. It's not even remotely thought out - using my calculations in >>59417 - if they get rid of the income tax personal allowance, raise income tax to 30%, get rid of the NI threshold and replace it with a £72 per week Citizen's Income then anyone earning £9,300 and above is worse off (£9,300 @ 30% = £2,790 plus the £955 extra NI = £3,745, i.e. greater than the £3,744 of £72 x 52). If that's how they plan to fund it then there's great big fuck-off glaring holes that anyone with half a brain could have worked out.

>>59419
^{I thought you wanted me to stop calling myself Greenlad? What's the point if you're going to do it anyway?}

>>59420
Yeah but those figures aren't in Green Party policy, so you can't say 'they didn't think it through'. To be fair I don't know who thought it through and what figures they used, but you're using figures from a Guardian article.

>they'll raise the basic rate of tax to 30% and make 12% National Insurance payable on all income
Where does it say that in our policy, for instance? Official policy states National Insurance will be abolished and merged into income tax.

>>59421
If it is the case that NI is abolished, income tax is at 30% and there's no personal allowance then that would see people better off:

Someone on £30k would pay income tax of £3,900 and NI of £2,645 = £6,545 under the current system. If it was 30% on everything then that's £9,000 in tax, but the Citizen's Income would reduce this by £3,744 to £5,256 net.

>>59422
Whatever you say lad; as I said there are no official figures to reference so this is just speculation. In fact the party newsletter has just arrived in my inbox and includes a piece penned by Our Dear Leader on our negative media coverage that concurs with what I've been cautioning. Alongside paragraphs about how it isn't our policy to remove all immigration controls or put the Queen in a council house, with regards to Citizen's Income she says:

This is a long-standing Green Party policy and is about recasting the social security system so that it is fit for the twenty-first century. Universal Basic Income is about providing economic security for everyone, removing the benefits trap, making work pay, and ensuring a reasonable work/life balance so that people get to spend more time on the things that matter most.

We will include a fully-costed proposal in our General Election manifesto but until that point we will not be releasing costings. The BBC and others are bandying figures around but these are not Green Party figures and should not be taken as such.

>>59423

Regardless of whether the Green Party get their sums right, basic income is a fundamentally sound policy. When Thatcherites and Marxists agree on something, you need to pay attention.

>>59423

It isn't the arty newsletter she wants to be putting that in though, it's actual papers people read she wants to worry about. I like the Green party but they seem determined to make themselves unelectable by some means or other, mainly with regards to defence cuts.

As much of a hippy as I am, I have to say that reducing the UK's defence with global politics how it is could be a disastrous move, we face potential threats from every side. The EU looks set to implode at any minute and placing all our money in that pot could turn out very nastily.

>>59423
>Alongside paragraphs about how it isn't our policy to remove all immigration controls
Indeed, a Green Britain will implement stricter immigration controls.

>MG204 Communities and regions should have the right to restrict inward migration when one or more of the following conditions are satisfied:
>...
>b)The recipient area is owned or controlled by indigenous peoples (eg Australian aboriginal people) whose traditional lifestyle would be adversely affected by in-comers;
>MG205 Migration policies should not discriminate directly on grounds of race, colour, religion, political belief, disability, sex or sexual orientation.

>>59426
Though MG204 wouldn't apply here because Britain isn't 'owned or controlled by indigenous peoples'. What's stricter about MG205?

>>59426
>Indeed, a Green Britain will implement stricter immigration controls.
Pull the fucking other one studentlad. If you'd actually read the green's manifesto you would have spotted that part about "destroying the idea of British nationality", plus their rules such as no deportations - if you jump the fence, you're in for good.

The idea of "nationality" is outdated and outmoded. I welcome a Green Government who will get rid of the imaginary lines on the map of the British Isles.

The land belongs to nobody!

>>59430
I agree with you that the concept of nationality is silly and meaningless, but it is built into the human psyche at a very deep level.

You can't just destroy the idea of nationality overnight. Over a few generations you could, but new ideas would spring up as quickly as you got rid of them. Meddling with cultural identity is a bloody insane thing to even attempt.

>>59430
>who will get rid of the imaginary lines on the map of the British Isles.

Imaginary lines? Last time I checked there was a great big coast that marks where Britain ends and begins.

>>59432

Actually the United Kingdom ends in an imaginary line out in the sea, also at an imaginary line on the island of Ireland.

>>59430

Yeah mate! Fight the power! Bash the fash! I'm a citizen of the world m8!

>>59433
... and they can't even figure out where the imaginary line is on the waater around Ireland.

The Dutch are at it now. Well, at least one city is.

>It might be thought that, in these austere times, no idea could be more politically toxic: literally, a policy of the state handing over something for nothing. But in Utrecht, one of the largest cities in the Netherlands, and 19 other Dutch municipalities, a tentative step towards realising the dream of many a marginal and disappointed political theorist is being made.

>The politicians, well aware of a possible backlash, are rather shy of admitting it. “We had to delete mention of basic income from all the documents to get the policy signed off by the council,” confided Lisa Westerveld, a Green councillor for the city of Nijmegen, near the Dutch-German border. “We don’t call it a basic income in Utrecht because people have an idea about it – that it is just free money and people will sit at home and watch TV,” said Heleen de Boer, a Green councillor in that city, which is half an hour south of Amsterdam.

>Nevertheless, the municipalities are, in the words of de Boer, taking a “small step” towards a basic income for all by allowing small groups of benefit claimants to be paid £660 a month – and keep any earnings they make from work on top of that. Their monthly pay will not be means-tested. They will instead have the security of that cash every month, and the option to decide whether they want to add to that by finding work. The outcomes will be analysed by eminent economist Loek Groot, a professor at the University of Utrecht.

>A start date for the scheme has yet to be settled – and only benefit claimants involved in the pilots will receive the cash – but there is no doubting the radical intent. The motivation behind the experiment in Utrecht, according to Nienke Horst, a senior policy adviser to the municipality’s Liberal Democrat leadership, is for claimants to avoid the “poverty trap” – the fact that if they earn, they will lose benefits, and potentially be worse off.

>The idea also hopes to target “revolving door clients” – those who are forced into jobs by the system but repeatedly walk out of them. If given a basic income, the thinking goes, these people might find the time and space to look for long-term employment that suits them.

>But the logic of basic income, according to people to the left of Horst, leads only one way – to the cash sum becoming a universal right. It would be unthinkable for those on benefits to be earning and receiving more than their counterparts off benefits. Horst admitted: “Some municipalities are very into the basic income thing.” Indeed leftwing councillors in Utrecht believe this is an opportunity to prove to a sceptical public that people don’t just shirk and watch television if they are given a leg-up. “I think we need to have trust in people,” said de Boer.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/26/dutch-city-utrecht-basic-income-uk-greens

The Switzerland government plans to pay every single adult a guaranteed £425 a week – whether they work or not. The radical plan will be voted on in a countrywide referendum later this year.

If the Swiss vote yes it would make the country the first in the world to pay all of its citizens an unconditional income, with politicians hoping it could help abolish poverty.

Under the scheme each child would also receive £100 a week.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/switzerland-government-plans-give-adults-7265879

You've got to give the supporters of this credit for not giving up after the referendum failed last time around.

>>59435

Even when we can agree on where the imaginary lines should be drawn, three are four different lines.

>>68715
Well worth waiting a year for, thanks.

Scotland looks set to be the first part of the UK to pilot a basic income for every citizen, as councils in Fife and Glasgow investigate trial schemes in 2017.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/01/universal-basic-income-trials-being-considered-in-scotland

Here's hoping they trial it. It'll be interesting to see the results.

>>81335
What the fuck? This can't be successfully done on a local government level. There's no funding and not enough control over the other things it will affect.

>>81336
They haven't even done a feasibility study yet, it's very early days, so no plan of how it'd be funded but the article mentions £2.7bn being devolved to Scotland.

>>81335
How progressive, makes such a difference from those evil racist Englishmen. Scotland is Scandanavian don't you know.

>>81338
>Scotland is Scandanavian don't you know.

You're thinking of Sweden. I can see how it can be confusing, both names begin with the letter 'S'.

>>81337
Isn't that money only really devolved on paper though?
i.e. technically they gain control over the 2.7bn, but it's 2.7bn that was being spent anyway, so realistically they can only edge-fiddle, as opposed to 2.7bn extra that they can actually work with.

Without UK parliament support (or independence) it's hard to see how the government could fund the real thing. (Though I suppose for a control trial, they could probably afford it using the money from a departmental underspend. Giving 10,000 the national average wage (presumably lower in practice, but neat ball-park figure) was 265 million, while Holyrood's underspend was 350m in 2016.

Now: Calculate the national average wage from the figures given. Show your working.

______

>>81341
>Show your working

Who needs to show 'working' to divide two numbers together?

>>81346
Wanker maths teachers who put me off the entire subject by constantly insisting I write down redundant working.
You have to show working. It's very clearly written on the question. You won't get any marks unless I see some working.

>>81338

What does any of this have to do with race, you soft bastard?

>>81347
In fairness it's the fault of the examiners not the teachers.

>>81335
I'm moving to Scotland.

>>81361

Speaking of moving up north of the wall, if an Englishman does that, does he qualify for free tertiary education?

>>81362
You would probably need to live there for 3 or 5 years or something to qualify.

>>81362
Just wear a kilt on the enrolment day and you'll be fine.

>>81369

You could have told me that three to five years ago.

>>81373

Well, I do like shortbread.

Jobless people are being paid a guaranteed basic income of nearly £6,000 a year in a radical experiment in Finland.

The Scandinavian country became the first in Europe to trial such a scheme, with 2,000 unemployed receiving 560 Euros (£475) a month for two years from January 1.

The recipients are free to spend the money on anything they choose, do not need to prove they are looking for work and will still receive the basic income even if they do get a full- or part-time job.

Finnish government agency Kela, which is responsible for the country’s social benefits, hopes the scheme will encourage the recipients to seek employment, remove disincentives to work and reduce bureaucracy. But critics fear getting a guaranteed basic income could have the opposite effect by making some unemployed people ‘lazier’ and less inclined to look for a job.

The scheme is part of the measures by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Juha Sipila to tackle Finland’s joblessness problem.

The unemployment rate of Finland, a nation of 5.5 million, stood at 8.1 percent in November 2106 with some 213,000 people without a job, unchanged from the previous year.

Marjukka Turunen, head of Kela’s legal affairs unit, said: ‘At present, unemployed persons may not gain any additional income even if they find work because earnings reduce social benefits. For someone receiving a basic income, there are no repercussions if they work a few days or a couple of weeks. Incidental earnings do not reduce the basic income, so working and self-employment are worthwhile no matter what. This is the key idea behind the basic income.’

According to her, the basic income, which is paid in advance at the beginning of each month, also helps its recipients plan their finances and provides a sense of security. More and more people are working part-time or temporarily or are self-employed and coordinating social security systems with non-standard work is often challenging.

Kela say basic income should help to reduce bureaucracy as the recipients, who were randomly selected and aged between 25 and 58, do not have to report the number of hours they work or to fill in various forms.

The average private sector income in Finland is 3,500 Euros (£2,975) per month, according to official data.

Professor Olli Kangas, director of research at Kela, said it will be ‘highly interesting’ to see how the basic income makes people behave. He said: ‘Will this lead them to boldly experiment with different kinds of jobs? Or, as some critics claim, make them lazier with the knowledge of getting a basic income without doing anything?’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4086068/Unemployed-Finland-paid-6-000-year-social-experiment.html

The Finnish government has decided not to expand a limited trial in paying people a basic income, which has drawn much international interest.

Currently 2,000 unemployed Finns are receiving a flat monthly payment of €560 (£490; $685) as basic income. Finland's two-year pilot scheme started in January 2017, making it the first European country to test an unconditional basic income. The 2,000 participants - all unemployed - were chosen randomly.

But it will not be extended after this year, as the government is now examining other schemes for reforming the Finnish social security system.

The pilot's full results will not be released until late 2019.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43866700

>>84207

Seems like a low amount. I thought the entire point of it was that it would be enough money to enjoy a standard quality of life, i.e. rent a flat, get your food shopping, and do something with your daytime.

>>84208
I think this was on top of their other state benefits, although I've no idea what they're like in Finland.

>>81378

I love the idea behind things like this. I love telling people about how it would actually be better for unemployment and pull out all the arguments a good socialist does about how we would actually end up dividing labour more equitably and all end up better off.

But deep down I know that if we ever got it here, I'd quit my job the same fucking day. I fancy it'd allow me to become one of those wankers with a YouTube channel or the kind of person who buys Warhammer to paint and then put on eBay, but without worrying about actually being successful because in reality I'd spend 6 days a week without even getting dressed.

My reasons for wanting a universal basic income are entirely selfish.

>>84210
Don't feel too bad. Apparently a good number of those in the trial went on to start businesses, knowing they could afford to take the risk.

>>84211

You know how trust fund kids often turn out to be unreasonably successful despite a lack of apparent talent? That's half the idea behind UBI. By reducing the consequences of failure, you empower people to take chances.

The early 80s were a boom period for creativity, despite record levels of unemployment. A lot of young people thought "I'm stuck on the dole, I can't get a job, I might as well start a band". Nobody really checked that you were actively seeking work, because there were so few vacancies. Countless magazines, record labels, film studios and game development companies were started off the back of Enterprise Allowance. The student grant also functioned as a kind of basic income - you could sign up for a course at a polytechnic, do the bare minimum of coursework and get paid to spend three years figuring out what you wanted to do with your life. Today we have record low unemployment, but that's not necessarily a good thing in the long term - the harsh sanctions regime has forced a lot of people into dead-end jobs or marginal "self employment" of the Uber/Deliveroo variety.

>>84212
>A lot of young people thought "I'm stuck on the dole, I can't get a job, I might as well start a band". Nobody
There's a wonderful NME article on this. Has one of my favourite quotes of all time on it: "The dole used to be called the 'John Major Musical Scholarship.'"
https://wingsoverscotland.com/a-little-bit-of-history/
(Yeah, I know, Scottish Nationalist website. It's just scans of an old magazine article, I'm not rehosting it just to look good.)

The tax-free personal allowance, which rises to £12,500 in April, should be scrapped and replaced with a flat payment of £48 a week for every worker, according to radical proposals welcomed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

The proposal, from the New Economics Foundation thinktank, is for a £48.08 “weekly national allowance,” amounting to £2,500.16 a year from the state, paid to every worker over the age of 18 earning less than £125,000 a year. The cash would not replace benefits and would not depend on employment. The policy idea has been welcomed by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, and the Green MP Caroline Lucas, and would mean that as many as 88% of all adults would see their post-tax income rise or stay the same, helping to lift 200,000 families across the country out of poverty.

The weekly payments would be fully funded by the abolition of the tax-free personal allowance, which has seen inflation-busting increases under the Conservatives over the past 10 years, but which NEF said had benefited richer households most. For someone on £25,000 a year, the personal allowance means that the first £12,500 of their earnings, from this April, are not charged basic rate tax at 20%. This is worth £2,500. But if the same person is paid £48 a week instead, they will receive £2,496 a year, so they will be no better or worse off.

The leftwing thinktank, which has developed close links with Labour to become a key influencer of shadow Treasury thinking, estimates the current cost the tax-free allowance is as much as £111.2bn. It said the change would transfer about £8bn currently spent on tax allowances that benefit the 35% of highest income households to the rest of the country.

The policy is likely to face opposition from some voters, as it would also mean bringing down the threshold for higher-rate taxpayers from £50,000 to £37,500. This is because the starting point for 40% income tax moves with the personal allowance. NEF said this would affect the top 13% of earners in the country.

The richest 10% of households will be £1,470 better off by 2019-20 as a result of changes to the personal allowance since 2010, compared with just £130 for each of the poorest 10% of households.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/11/scrap-tax-free-personal-allowance-and-pay-everyone-48-a-week

>>85197

I support this entirely, as someone who would be worse off for it, but can still remember a time it would have helped me pay the bills.

I assume this is the 'foot in the door' part of a larger vision for proper UBI, or at the very least it could work as a catalyst for it.

>>85198
I'm not sure how accurate their analysis is, but I find it astonishing if only 13% earners would be affected by reducing the higher rate tax band from £50,000 to £37,500.

>>85199

I can't be arsed verifying their figures, but they seem perfectly plausible on the face of it.

I'm more shocked that Labour are proposing a sensible, costed policy that would actually make a difference. More please.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax

>>85199
Median individual income is around the 26 mark, so 13% earning 37-50 seems reasonable.

>>85201
It would affect everyone earning more than £37,500, not just those in that band.

>>85202
You're quibbling over <1.2%.

>>85203
Nothing has stopped us from quibbling over far more trivial matters than that before.

>>85197
Ah, so the people who live in urban areas get whacked disproportionately hard with a 40% income tax while the rural poor are trained in a transactional relationship with Comrade McDonnell. "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss" as I'm sure he will quote in Parliament.

I'm being a bit hyperbolic but it annoys me that cost-of-living isn't calculated in income tax. Such a figure would hit the lower earning professional class in London pretty hard and funnily enough that includes the poor buggers at HMRC having to make this unnecessarily complicated system work. Maybe their London offices would soon be burned down though once some minor IT cock-up causes problems with paying off the massive tellys of the proletariat.

>>85205
>I'm being a bit hyperbolic
No shit. I'm not exactly a fervent supporter of the Dear Leader but fucking hell, have a fucking word with yourself.

>>85205
>cost-of-living isn't calculated in income tax

Would be happy to have rent and travelling expenses taken into account when paying tax. As you say though, would make an already byzantine system even worse. At the other end of the scale would be a simple, flat, same rate of tax for all; but then rich bastards like me would almost certainly pay less. No easy answers.

>>85200
Never seen that sheet before, fascinating, thanks.

Slightly gutted I've missed being in the 1% by one place though. Must work harder.

>>85207

Now I'm a proper fucking commie, me, but even so, I can kind of get behind a flat rate.

What you'd have to do though, is make the tax-free income allowance fuck huge to compensate. You'd have to have people on minimum wage more or less guaranteed not to pay anything and something like tax credits for people living in daft places like That London, while every cunt else pays 35% or summat.

>>85209
Flat tax doesn't work. Even if you avoid the issues of marginal utility by using a massive allowance, you're still leaving a fuckload of money on the table at the high end.

If you want to make sure the super-rich are paying their share, institute a wealth tax above some massive ceiling threshold. Make it high enough that someone with one property isn't going to fall foul of it, to ensure that anyone subject to it is going to be able to either earn or liquidate enough to pay their bill. Say 2% on wealth above £10m.

>>85210

Doesn't that just scare the super rich of to tax havens and less scrupulous countries that don't take as much of their unnecessarily large income off them though?

>>85211
It isn't a problem because we're slowly and surely clamping down on secret tax havens.

Oh, no, my mistake, apparently that particular reform failed because the government didn't want it to apply to Jersey.

>>85212
The EU would have forced them to from April 1st this year, which is the real reason behind brexit. If Article 50 gets extended, they'll be forced to impliment the new loophole closure measures regardless.

>>85205
If you put cost of living in income tax, you discourage people from moving from high cost areas to low cost areas. Most economists would consider that a bad thing.
Though honestly I wouldn't mind taking the alternate, long-winded approach of having the government try to get the cost of living down as much as possible as part of a general commitment to rescuing areas rather than atomised individuals. Back to the days of telling companies they can get planning permission for a factory, but only if they'll build it in an area of high unemployment, while mass chucking up council houses in London to get rents down. That sort of thing. Most people just don't seem to move that often, and when they do it's to an area with some family connection already.

>>85214

The structural problems in the British economy are basically the same as in the Eurozone, just on a smaller scale. Islington and Macclesfield are economically as different as Düsseldorf and Athens. The obvious solution is the same - split the currency. London and the Home Counties get one pound, the rest of the country gets another, with floating exchange rates. Most of the problems in deprived ex-industrial areas could be solved in a matter of years if we just allowed the currency to devalue to a sustainable level.

>>85215
This sounds mad but also like it would work.

>>85223

Would it? Or would we just see millions of Londoners drive up to Middlesbrough every weekend to fill up barrels full of cheap petrol?

That's what happens currently in Ireland, people cross the border to take advantage of the disparate prices and taxes on things. There's even some enterprising chaps who park fuel tankers just shy of the border and fill cars up on the other side. Perfectly legal, allegedly.

So you might only end up fixing the economy for the handful of northerners already loaded enough to buy a lorry.

>>85224

Petrol is only one factor, but it's the entire point in microcosm. You want to incentivise southerners to spend their money up north. You want people to blatantly take the piss, because that funnels money from south to north. You want hundreds of businesses to move their factories and offices up north, you want them to prefer northern suppliers. That's why the value of currencies is allowed to float, why Bretton Woods was such a disaster and why the Euro has broken Greece - differences in spending power help struggling economies to catch up, by making all their goods and services cheaper on the export market. We could rebalance the British economy just by printing a load of new banknotes.

But would we then not just see the same thing happening again between Manchester and Redcar? Would we then have to divvy the money up again?

>>85225
>We could rebalance the British economy just by printing a load of new banknotes.

This must be trolling - nobody could be this dense.

>>85235

You do realise he means that in the context of splitting the currency, don't you?

>>85238
Still an absolutely dense idea - unless of course he is suggesting building hard borders between each county.

>>85239

No because the point is to get people and businesses up into the north.

I don't even agree with the lad, but I at least understand the plan.

>>85235
>>85238
Y'know, even if he didn't mean that, it's not a terrible idea. During the credit crunch, quantitive easing was essentially printing new money. However if that money was given to the poor, who are more likely to spend it immediately than the rich, it would have a much more stimulatory effect on the economy, for a negligible effect on inflation. It's only printing money repeatedly to fund routine infrastructure or to pay debt, that doesn't work.

>>85259
>who are more likely to spend it immediately than the rich, it would have a much more stimulatory effect on the economy

What would happen is that all the local / Northern shops would just put their prices up. This is capitalism / economics 101. Your printing-money idea would only work if there were similar, compensating controls on pricing and supply; otherwise this would balance out any benefit of doing it in the first place.

If you wanted to help people like this, just give them stuff, don't fuck with the supply or value of money.

>>85261

I get the feeling you don't know how the supply of money is dictated.

>>85261
>If you wanted to help people like this, just give them stuff, don't fuck with the supply or value of money.
The people who say this line almost inevitably proceed to balk when you suggest going all robin hood. Assuming good faith, the fundamental problem is that this misses political economy. If I announce that I'm sticking up taxes and jacking up spending, the response - both on the markets and with the confidence of the general public - is going to be much higher than if I instruct the Bank of England to make some alterations to monetary policy which will have similar (if broader and less predictable) redistributive effects without overtly stating as much.

Frankly so long as whoever's in power isn't a complete idiot about it the risks would seem to be overstated. The 1970s were a total anomaly with disproportionate mindshare and almost every other country that has had major problems has already been a basket case before they went all macroeconomic populist. I'm not saying we should be the first ones to go out and try it and see what happens, it might still do bad things, but serious and sober minded people seem to be capable of thinking the UK could become Venezuela just because someone at the BoE had a shit day in the absence of any historical precedent.

>>85214
While I agree that government should be looking at ways to shift away from our London-centric model I do question how effective it will be. At least in terms of how solutions are now being approached. The London economy is built precisely around it being a global capital with the manufacture parts moved out to places like Derby (for Rolls-Royce aerospace). Yes, the rents outrageous but much of the work done in the capital is location specific and can't easily be transplanted without just hobbling the city.

To go back to the point of the HMRC, they have been doing a fair amount of moving the administrative workers out to regional hubs but there still needs to be a core contingent of policy managers in London. It's looking at the problem backwards when the issue isn't that everywhere else is shit but that London is incredibly successful and now suffers from national policy built on fairness but which becomes unfair regionally.

The alternative I suggest would be to embrace Georgism and attach the majority of tax collection to property value. That might still hurt London by it would at least have the knock-on effect of closing down the property game.

>>85261
>If you wanted to help people like this, just give them stuff, don't fuck with the supply or value of money.

I've long argued that governments should help address the stress of a downturn by buying everyone a pint. It's a bit like that tax holiday we had at the start of the Great Recession where sales tax was removed only rather than just a signal to consume it is one telling you to take some tlc.

Maybe we could go further and have public holiday camps with a special bank holiday in times of trouble. People could choose what kind of place they go (so I don't rub elbows with the riff-raff) but all would offer some greater public function like education or a special singles camp for bonking.

They're doing a trial in Germany. 120 people receiving 1,200 Euros a month for 3 years.

https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/grundeinkommen-studie-startet-das-1200-euro-experiment-a-413dcee7-1d58-4d19-abd1-8d241972ffd4

>>90428
Seems like with the furlough at almost 30% of the population in many areas, we've been doing a widescale beta test the past five months.

The crazy Swiss are at it again.

>Geneva is to raise its minimum wage to almost £3,500 a month, reported to be the highest in the world, after locals approved the measure in a surprise vote result sparked by reports of growing coronavirus-linked poverty in the Swiss city.

>The canton’s 500,000 voters passed the increase proposed by local unions and leftwing parties, after twice rejecting it in 2011 and 2014.

>The minimum hourly wage will rise to just under £19.50 an hour, more than twice the rate in neighbouring France, with a guaranteed minimum monthly salary of 4,086 Swiss francs (£3,457) based on a 41-hour working week, or 49,000 Swiss francs (£41,430) a year, in one of the world’s most expensive cities to live.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/geneva-raises-minimum-wage-covid-poverty-switzerland

The world’s biggest consumer goods group is to adopt a four-day working week during a year-long trial in New Zealand.

From next week Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch company behind Lipton Tea and Dove soap, will pay its 81 staff there for five days while they work four. It will conduct a review after 12 months and will use the findings potentially to change working practices for its 155,000 staff around the world.

Several large companies have begun trials on a four-day week in the past two years, even though critics argue the practice would send many businesses to a loss. Microsoft said that employee productivity rose when it offered a four-day week in August last year to its staff in Japan, home to some of the world’s longest working hours.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/were-taking-the-long-view-says-unilever-before-testing-four-day-week-hhgfxd53j

>>91822

The long-term benefits of treating your employees kindly are beyond argument.

A friend just told me that his boss practically sees every three-minute chat between employees in the tea kitchen as a misuse of work time, and is completely ignorant of the fact that it can boost employee morale and that those missing three minutes will be made up many times over by increased productivity.

I can see a four-day week boosting productivity in certain parts of the economy, but it always depends on what industry you are talking about. Companies that are more manufacturing centered aren't just going to be able to shut off all their machines Thursday evening because the people operating them get to go home for the weekend. There will be no increase in productivity there, because unlike the "human production factor", machines don't usually need recuperation time after which higher numbers of product X can be churned out. On the days that a machine is standing still, it typically doesn't cover its cost, and that should neutralise the increased productivity that you get from giving employees operating those machines more downtime.

But a company that chiefly produces software like Microsoft and doesn't rely on machinery as such beyond a few PCs that people write their code on can really see increased productivity on the whole from a shortened work week.

>>91824
>Companies that are more manufacturing centered aren't just going to be able to shut off all their machines Thursday evening because the people operating them get to go home for the weekend. There will be no increase in productivity there, because unlike the "human production factor", machines don't usually need recuperation time after which higher numbers of product X can be churned out. On the days that a machine is standing still, it typically doesn't cover its cost, and that should neutralise the increased productivity that you get from giving employees operating those machines more downtime.

Unilever have said that it will be staggered so that there won't be a day they have to shut everything down.

>>91824
I worked in manufacturing and it was a four-day week with staggered shifts, as negotiated by the very strong union presence in the plant.

>>91824

I don't work in manufacturing, but somewhere that does require 24 hour coverage, but still does a four day week - we just stagger people and shifts, it's not much of an issue. It also means nobody has to work permanent nights, or nights at all really - admittedly 1800-0100 is not the greatest shift in the world, but it's far better than the old industry standard way of doing five 12 hour shifts then four off.

>>91827
>>91826
>>91825
>>91824

I've always thought part of the problem is simply old fashioned management or whoever, sometimes the workers themselves, who can't get their head out of the idea that work happens 9-5, Monday to Friday, and that's that. This demonstrates it quite nicely, otherlad made some good points but then just entirely failed to consider the idea that you might not just have every cunt in the factory on the same shift.

I'm working 4/7 shifts at the minute, we don't need quite 24 hour coverage but we cover 8am to 10pm, and if anything needs attention in between those hours someone is on call. But the transition to this working arrangement took years of battling, but in favour of and against it by the unions and the bosses and the curmudgeonley old workers who didn't want to have to work Saturdays, and so on. These people who are all perfectly happy with McDonalds being open 24 hours but as far as they're concerned, nobody real works outside the typical 9-5.

It's always pissed me off because I'm a lot happier doing late shifts, it just suits my body clock better, I'd start at 2 and finish at 12 ideally. But even now that we're on the extended hours, I can't work my preferred hours as much as I like, because the other lot insist they get their fair share of the enhanced evening pay. These are the same people who spent over five years fighting tooth and nail not to have to do it at all, and I would have happily covered that shift from now until retirement so they didn't have to- But that'd be unfair because I'd get more money.

Cunts.

>A universal basic income scheme is to be trialled in Wales, meaning adults, regardless of their means, will receive a regular sum of money. The idea is that this would cover the basic cost of living.

>First Minister Mark Drakeford said the pilot would "see whether the promises that basic income holds out are genuinely delivered" in people's lives. But the Conservatives said Wales should not become "a petri dish for failed left-wing policies".

>Mr Drakeford said a pilot would "need to be carefully designed to make sure that it is genuinely adding income for the group of people we are able to work with".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-57120354

>>93663
So do taxes increase throughout this trial period? Will businesses see corporation tax skyrocket for a couple of months? That seems unlikely, but at the same, surely it's not a proper trial otherwise.

>the Conservatives said Wales should not become "a petri dish for failed left-wing policies"
Fucking hell. I hate them so much. I don't even support guaranteed basic income, at least not in the way I usually see it presented, but there comes a point when your party is actively agitating against helping anyone except itself.

>>93664

I will be very suprised if rent doesn't immediately jump up by a value nearly exactly the same as the universal income.

>>93668
If my landlords try it on, Mme. la Guillotine will be dispatched to the address on the tenancy agreement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl39KHS07Xc

Inevitably it will be a trial of helicopter money, not UBI.

>>93672

What's the difference, in the context of our greater socioeconomic landscape?

>>93670
>UBI won't cause inflation because it's shifting resources from one economic area to another

I don't think they thought that line through. If my rent increases because of landlords, as we discussed in /boo/, then that product has faced price inflation - if champagne and anti-tank missiles become cheaper then it doesn't even out for renters.

If anything it's not only inflation on the basket of essentials but also aiding market inefficiencies.

>>93673

Not him, but helicopter money would most likely be a one-off or irregular payment, rather than a permanent regular income like a UBI.

>>93675

Is it even really relevant if it causes inflation? Our economic system is more or less based on inflation.

It seems to me like it's one of those things that will get wheeled out as a negative when it's convenient, such as wealth redistribution, and then talked about as a positive in other contexts, like property market speculation.

If the entire world agreed to stop giving people payrises, I mean annual ones rather than for like promotion, would inflation more-or-less disappear?

>>93678
No - you'd probably also have to fix the costs of commodities, raw materials and food prices.

>>93679
Why would they go up if the cost of labour remains the same?

>>93677
Our economy needs a balanced and steady rate of inflation, not least to encourage investment and adjust to productivity gains. Mess with that balance either way and bad things will happen that can quickly turn into freefall as public confidence in the pound evaporates.

It's illustrative that one of the few examples of a deliberate price inflation of essentials was shock therapy in the Soviet Union to ensure the country avoided starvation.

>Is it even really relevant if it causes inflation?

If the government gives me £9 and a loaf of bread now costs £10 then I've not gained under UBI. That's a simplified example but it's what the argument is getting at.

>>93680
Because of their scarcity - the weather also plays a big part in the variability of food prices.

>>93678

The great economist Abba Lerner actually put forward a similar idea to this, in response to the stagflation of the 70s.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1978/06/1978b_bpea_lerner.pdf

>>93678
>>93683
Surely if wage stagnation would arrest inflation then the past 10 years would've proved it, if not been part of a long-trend of multi-decadal deflation. Unless it's all been counteracted by the government giving free money to people with connections and property 'investors'. Oh dear I've made myself angry.

>>93678

Theoretically, maybe, but it presents a huge co-ordination problem. One of the key catalysts of the Winter of Discontent was the imposition of pay increase controls in an attempt to limit inflation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent#Incomes_policy

Wales basic income: Pilot will give care leavers £19,000 a year

A £20m experiment offering a basic income to young people leaving care will launch in Wales on Friday.

From 1 July, the Welsh government will offer about 500 18-year-olds £19,200 a year before tax - no strings attached.

One care leaver said the cash would be a "safety blanket" and others hope it will help give the 18-year-olds a good start.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-61950546

>A universal basic income of £1,600 a month is to be trialled in England for the first time in a pilot programme.

>Thirty people will be paid a lump sum without conditions each month for two years and will be observed to understand the effects on their lives. Two places in England have been selected for the micro pilot scheme: central Jarrow, in north-east England, and East Finchley, in north London.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/04/universal-basic-income-of-1600-pounds-a-month-to-be-trialled-in-england

>>97730
>East Finchley

I'd be interested to see what happens if people in the multimillion pound mansions win. Let's hope their new wealth doesn't send them off the deep end.