Universal basic income init.
Theresa May's Conservatives
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour
Tim Farron's Liberal Democrats
Paul Nuttall's UKIP
2 people's Greens
Nicholas Durgeon's Scottish Nationalists
Satan's Sinn Fein
Dr Ian Paisley's DUP
Some other bunch of nonces
I'm foreign, but I wish I were an Englishman
Universal basic income init.
I think universal basic income is a pretty much inevitable outcome within our lifetimes. Many in the centre hate it for some reason but I can't see a better way of doing things.
Tax robots.
It would only work if it was literally all you received, and you had to cover your school/health/whatever out of it. If it was just a wage on top of existing welfare provisions then everything falls to bits.
I'd rather they overpay and everyone gets it rather than the opposite.Originally Posted by GS
Which is preposterous. You're basically advocating we spend a billion quid (or whatever the cut-off point would be) to guard against potential administrative error.
That idea is why I can't get on board of it yet.
Indeed. The cost estimates for it are staggeringly high (obviously), so you'd need to bin off everything else including pensions, all work or out-of-work benefits, health, education etc. You'd need to ring fence certain tax revenues for centralised spending (e.g. government, infrastructure, defence etc.) and then distribute the rest.
The problem, of course, would be that you'd have a certain class of people who would spend the money going on a month-long binge to Magaluf whilst their kids go without education. Then you'd have everybody complain that this is the case and that the state must step in and spend their money for them, at which point you're back where you started.
Fortunately, you would expect wealthier left-wingers to have set up some sort of fund for those people. You know, like, re-distributing it, because they already have enough.
True. I'm working to the assumption that they'd be opening up their empty rooms to poor folk anyway, like they all pretended they were going to do for all those Syrians they wanted us to bring in.
It's always the poor cunts who ruin it.
Look at them with their phones!
You mean like hundreds of people have offered their homes to people who lived at the Grenfell Tower.
Edit-
The Magaluf thing, what on earth. Beyond words.
The man has no humanity. The accountancy has killed any compassion beyond the bottom line.
He's just a weird, horrible cunt.
Let's not pretend that you wouldn't have some idiots who would piss it all away.
I think we've just found a window into GS' upbringing.
I doubt they'd be going to Magaluf, but I know people now who spaff every penny they get on booze and couldn't give less of a toss if their kids actually go to school. A second's thought should tell you he's absolutely right.
Yeah, not understanding the reaction here. The type of people that appear on Jeremy Kyle are exactly the kind of people who would take the money, spaff it all and then moan that they don't have the money to make a doctor's appointment.
As a form a Social Darwinism it could be a good experiment.
That's how the Tories have been in power the last few years. People have short memories. #BENEFITBRITAIN
I think some of you need to stop looking for reasons to be outraged and actually try and think through the consequences, or otherwise, of certain policies or suggestions.
It wasn't the hypothetical consequences that struck me. It was the distinct snobbery in your post.
What, that some people would spend the money on themselves and not their children's education?
For the most part, my education was free. Isn't that how most people look at it?
A tiny, tiny percentage of people would do something like that. I'm not advocating universal basic income, I have no real idea whether it'd work. That's not my point. You're so unaware of how you come across there's not much point going further with it, and it's no fun anyway.
I'm not sure what your point is.
There'd be a hell of a lot more than you'd think, regrettably. The consequence of the inevitable pissing of the money up the wall would be an outcry that "this was allowed to happen in 21st century Britain" and we'd go back to controlling the spending for everybody as we do now.
Incidentally, if you're expecting everybody to congratulate each other when unworkable "leftie" ideas are suggested as solutions to all the country's ills then you're probably on the wrong forum.
Did you not read my post? "I'm not advocating universal basic income, I have no real idea whether it'd work. That's not my point."
Anyway, have a good evening.
Is this a "fact" as in something that's true? Or a "fact" as in this is how GS sees the world?
I think the point really is self-evident.
I took that (incorrectly) to imply the money spent on Magaluf should've been spent on the kids, rather than some general absentee parenting.
In the sense that it coincides with your pre-existing prejudices.
It's like how the Republicans keep attaching drug tests to welfare in the US, only to find that the numbers are always significantly lower than the population at large.
Here we go again.
It's not prejudice to recognise that there would be an issue.
All it would take would be a handful of 'human interest' stories about how the new system had failed and you'd end up ripping it up and starting again.
As a more extreme example of the inevitable difficulty - what would happen if somebody gambled the money away, had no money for health insurance (replacing the NHS) and needed treatment? Would they be turned away or would there be an expectation we treat them anyway, thus undermining the entire point of the new system?
Jo Swinson isn't running for leader, so presumably it's going to be Vince v Norman Lamb.
Vince may be TARNISHED by the coalition, but he's still their only recognisable national face - it might make sense to have him do it for a couple of years to remind people that the Lib Dems actually exist and then hand over to someone else for the next election. Or maybe by reminding everybody that they exist he just reminds people of the broken promises and being mates with Tories.
I can't think of anything more irrelevant than who is Lib Dem leader.
I only care to the extent I'd like them to take more seats off Wee Jimmy Krankie in the north.
I'd like to go back to the actual wording I object to: "There'd be a hell of a lot more than you'd think, regrettably."
That's a statement of opinion as inviolable fact. You do this all the time, and I'd quite like to see you to back this one up. Because I actually don't think it's true. I think it would be at worst a small minority, which is far less than you'd think. This is consistent with what you see every time people try and impose controls and testing on welfare in the US: people on welfare are generally more careful with money than their detractors give them credit for.
I'm open to this being wrong, but your personal opinions (even if you deliver them as "facts") mean absolutely nothing to me.
It's an assertion of belief, not of 'inviolable fact', as nobody could prove the point either way.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...in-facts-myths
2013 report, there's no substantial recent figures.
So to deal with the point that quite a fucking lot of people may piss their benefits (£70 a week) up the wall, what leads you to believe this GS? Is it a local sample of your area, where you've gone and spoke to such people? Is it seeing them in a pub while you're off grafting, crunching numbers? Is it seeing them not in soul crushing depression, maybe even happy as you work yourself to the bone?
Some, yes some, and going off my experiences of living via benefits since the age of 18 being shipped all around Manchester, this equates to a small amount do take the piss, yes, There will be chancers, as there are in every walk of life, be it poor, middle class, or rich. A lot blow their benefit due to living in a deprived, run down, no fucks given about it area, on horrible, drug, alcohol and crime ridden estates. They have no qualifications due to being either thick or having zero ambition through years of trying and fuck all coming of it (yes, these people exist). They turn to drink, or drugs, or perhaps, God fucking forbid, they save up a few hundred by living on 50p chicken nuggets or pot noodles, going without electric/gas as a lot of these people live via paid meters day in, day out, with zero light at the end of the tunnel. Being treated like shit by the DWP for the sake of £70 a week, constant rejection of jobs because they're not qualified or smart enough to be anything but a shit shoveller. They see some hope in escaping that for a week at a shitty all inclusive hotel for a week. Utter cuntery. My last medical, btw, lasted 10 minutes. No physical checks on me whatsoever, no looking into my history. Can I wash myself? Can I go out of the house once a week? Can I walk 50 meters unaided? Before I got the part time gardening gig last year (just that years work has fucked my knees up way beyond what they were a year ago btw, but I needed 'experience', in a sector I cannot do in the future), I was rejected for over a hundred jobs. And I'm sure most on here, whether we get on or not, will attest I'm not a thick as fuck inbred cretin. You've got hundreds, sometimes thousands applying for a shitty minimum wage role. Why take a mid 30s person with a long period of no work when you can get a teen fresh out of school/college?
Then you have the Government of Cameron, and now May, systematically throwing disabled people off of the benefit that lets them exist, onto ESA if they're lucky. ESA is currently £100 (well, £70 as of now) a week, and you aren't hounded into oblivion to apply for 30+ jobs a week. The idea is to find work that you can do within your means, which sounds like a solid idea. I'm on ESA currently, soon to be taken off and quite rightly as I'm fit for work, I deliberately flunked my medical due to it. This system would work if you aren't then outsourced to another for profit organisation (Ingeus in my case) who will try and force you into zero hour contracts or short internships. If you take the zero hour contract, you are then classed as employed (them stats look good!) and you're given 'support' for a couple of months. As an example, my advisor, for Ingeus in Bury, has over 200 people he has to see at least once every two weeks. Some need way more support than others (severe disabilities, genuinely severe), so personally I'm lucky to see mine for more than 10 minutes within those two weeks. I get no real help beyond a "how're you doing?" kinda chat.
I'm lucky to be on the £100 a week, as anyone new to the scheme from April this year has been reduced to the exact same as JSA:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/...rder-claim-mps
They have to pay electric, gas, food, and travel to and from wherever their advisor is based (its never local, mines a 90 minute round trip via public transport). You can claim travel back up to £4, might be £5 as I only pay £2.20 for my travel and walk the mile there and back to save cash, if its above that, get fucked. If you have to get a taxi, you can't claim. You miss that appointment, you loose the benefit for two weeks. Instantly cut, regardless.
So okay, some might go to Magaluf, the absolute cunts. Some might piss it away on alcohol, or drugs, or a big TV, or a games console, or fucking anything to escape from this constant fucking cycle of shit. But fuck 'em, fuck the potential prospect of some of these people having potential comfort at some point in the future. There are disabled dying from the consequences of these cuts. There are vulnerable people, legit vulnerable people being ignored, forgotten about by their own fucking Government. But Stacey from the estate might slip out a third kid for an extra £100 a week, or Dave might buy a crate of lager for £20. The few, yes the few, might take the piss. And don't be banging on about fucking numbers whilst the rich/big business use tax havens, get favourable tax breaks, Politicians get huge wage increases and bonuses and fucking benefits to their 'work'. I'm seeing this shit first fucking hand.
Ten billion goes unclaimed from the benefits budget as of 2016:
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/s...-a7085166.html
By all means keep at your sources, your quotes, your stance, your beliefs, but don't bring your Daily Mail cunt prejudice into it.
https://welfaretales.wordpress.com/c...work-decision/
https://www.theguardian.com/careers/...-to-work-tests
https://mzolobajluk.wordpress.com/20...s-of-benefits/
EDIT: Corrected spelling, added new link.
Bravo!
Excellent post.
Good post. I can't say I miss those days.
Which is all very interesting, but the system has to be fair to the people who are actually paying for it too. I've no doubt it's shit, but it's public money and is thus subject to internal control requirements and accompanying documentation. Hence why expenditure is so tightly controlled.
Anyway, your post also missed two central points in relation to what I was actually talking about. First, it was in the context of UBI - not the current benefit system. Second, it was in the context of parents controlling all financial expenditure for dependents (that is, not being able to access key public services for free) - not the current benefit system in relation to unemployment, which is a different matter.
I'm all for personal responsibility - so if people want to spend their benefit money on whatever, I don't care. I really don't. It's your life. My point, which if you'd read it you'd have seen, was what happens when they're controlling finances for dependents and couldn't access public services for free.
For what it's worth, I thought cutting the PIP was stupid and unnecessary.
So in summation - that post didn't really address the issue of what would happen in a UBI system.
Only if a UBI system came at the expense of every other type of government aid which is not a necessity.
Given the scale of public spending in those areas, you wouldn't have much choice if you were going to make UBI fiscally feasible. Total spending is around £800bn.
Central government spending on key and basic infrastructure (defence, protection, transport etc). comprises some 30% and interest on existing debt is another 7%.
If you include the NHS and education, that's another 29% for FY18. You'd be ring fencing two thirds of spending. All you have left after that is pensions and welfare (34%), and that's before you considered what would in effect be a massive increase in 'in work' benefits paid out on a universal basis.
There's no way it works unless you effectively abandon all but essential centralised infrastructure and defence spending just to keep the country functioning. Even then, you'd do very, very well to average over ten grand a head for adults before you considered supplemental payments to children.
You could make some savings in "other spending", no doubt, and one would hope that interest payments will decrease over time if we have sound economic management. But even that, at a conservative estimate of 50m adults at 18 and over, wouldn't amount to much once you get down to the detail of actually distributing it.
That DS post is mega.
Meanwhile, GSbot avoids the emotional side of the discussion and returns to percentages.
I recognised it was shit for him, but to be quite frank if you ran the country by personalising every decision we'd be well on the way to bankruptcy, if not actually bankrupt.
We'd probably also have about 25% more people living here as your only admission criteria in the immigration process would be "does he seem like a decent lad".
Its not about 'running the country by personalising every decision', its about treating the disabled and poor as human beings and not statistics on a sheet whilst the papers run with the anti-benefit scum vitriol that whips the working man into a frenzy, which leads to the bullshit prejudice you were spouting.
I won't claim to know how to fix it, its beyond my capability, I'm just tired of that class being seen as lazy workshy cunts because of a minority. Its equivalent to calling all Muslims terrorists because a few mentals bomb somewhere. The post was made because you brought personal prejudice into it whilst at the same time having a go at Henry in the Tower thread for his prejudice.
When you're a voice that is deemed not worth listening to, for year upon year upon fucking year, told to shut up and put up with it, its dehumanising. Its why the Tower situation has so much anger aimed at the Tories, not merely due to that incident but due to the clear fucking divide between the haves having their whims tended to whilst the have nots are repeatedly told, essentially, 'fuck you you aren't worth shit, including the right to live in housing which is safe'.
Meanwhile, in another alternate universe, if you remove all emotion and empathy from politics, you're left with Rupert Murdoch's waiter asking if he'd like salt and vinegar with his Syrian refugee.
Yes but what about the rich people who need to pay for your shit? Why don't you think of them too!
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