Yes, I used ChatGPT to polish the English, it did a great job š while I am of course myself responsible for every point in this post.
To your comments:
This post points out that itās better for the business to actively co-shape UBI instead of passively rejecting it. For humanitarian reasons, itās good to ensure the existential minimum for everyone, even those too old or too sick to learn or work. If this minimum is already covered by other governmental programs or philanthropic organizations, thereās no need to include it in UBI. If business co-shape UBI, they can ask it to be conditioned on completing training programs, like the certificates offered by Microsoft. Itās an illusion that the market can automatically solve the problem. The market mechanisms only says that in an economic downturn, staff should be laid off. When the economy recovers, they can be re-hired. But the market mechanism doesnāt take care to maintain a disciplined reserve workforce in the meantime. When business starts to re-hire, they may find it difficult to find qualified staff, because part of the workforce drifted off in the meantime, some got mental problems, or alcohol/ādrug problems, some were radicalized, beside the agony suffered by the laid-off staff and destabilization faced by the society, it also becomes more expensive for the business to find qualified staff when they need them. Of course you can say that itās the governmentās job to take care for the unemployed, but of course government has to raise taxes for its social programs. If business actively co-shapes, it can make such programs more effective and efficient, have the reserve workforce trained in the way they can better find a job or start self-employment/āstart-up that can better meet the needs of the economy, and that at a lower cost.
If business co-shape UBI, they can ask it to be conditioned on completing training programs
I donāt think you (or the chatbot that helped you with that reply) understand what āUBIā means. UBI is the proposal that everyone is given a fixed basic income, funded from taxes, unconditional upon anything. No means tests, no requirement to do anything to qualify, nothing. Everyone gets it, no matter what their circumstances. It might coexist with other welfare schemes, but those are not part of UBI.
It doesnāt make sense to argue about definitions. If you define UBI so, then so does UBI mean for you. Iām actively pushing for a redefinition of UBI, or reshaping the policy as I said, because I thinks itās the right thing to do.
Did I reply in so perfect English that it sounded like corrected by ChatGPT? Cheer to my English, which has improved so much! š„
This is not about what UBI āmeans to meā, but about what the basic idea is that everyone but you calls āUBIā. The basic idea is to sweep away all of the various special-case means-tested benefits that require armies of staff to implement, and replace them by a single one that is paid to everyone. Are you alive? Are you a citizen? Then you get the UBI. Thatās it. That is the fundamental idea.
You can advocate for different welfare systems involving means tests and training vouchers and food stamps and businesses lobbying for this and that, but you donāt get to call that a āredefinitionā of UBI, any more than you can redefine āblueā to mean the colour of bananas or āFranceā to mean Australia.
I donāt deny that many, maybe the majority, view UBI as unconditional. But to say ALL define UBI this way is a really strong statement, do you have any proof?
Here an example I found on Britannica:
Ugandaās UBI trial, the Youth Opportunities Program, enabled participants to invest in skills training as well as tools and materials, resulting in an increase of business assets by 57%, work hours by 17%, and earnings by 38%.
Christopher Blattman et al., āGenerating Skilled Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Uganda,ā ssrn.com, Nov. 14, 2013
The article you link begins by bluntly saying, āUniversal basic income (UBI) is an unconditional cash payment given at regular intervals by the government to all residents, regardless of their earnings or employment status.ā Yes! That is what UBI is! It continues, āUBI remains largely theoretical and, thus, does not have much of a history.ā Yes! That is also true!
Various partial versions have been tried to a limited extent. But the Blattman et al paper the article cites does not claim to have anything to do with UBI. Neither āUBIā nor āuniversalā occur anywhere in that paper, and the welfare scheme it studies is nothing like UBI. The reference is irrelevant to the encyclopedia article, which has no business calling it āUgandaās UBI trialā.
Have Encyclopedia Britannica sunk so low as to use chatbots to write for them? Eheu!
If definition was so important to me, I could argue with you what unconditional really means and if the unsupervised Uganda program falls under the definition of UBI even when itās only granted to applicants with a valid proposal. But I give up, you win. And I donāt have to defend Britannica, because itās so well established.
Yes, I used ChatGPT to polish the English, it did a great job š while I am of course myself responsible for every point in this post.
To your comments:
This post points out that itās better for the business to actively co-shape UBI instead of passively rejecting it. For humanitarian reasons, itās good to ensure the existential minimum for everyone, even those too old or too sick to learn or work. If this minimum is already covered by other governmental programs or philanthropic organizations, thereās no need to include it in UBI. If business co-shape UBI, they can ask it to be conditioned on completing training programs, like the certificates offered by Microsoft. Itās an illusion that the market can automatically solve the problem. The market mechanisms only says that in an economic downturn, staff should be laid off. When the economy recovers, they can be re-hired. But the market mechanism doesnāt take care to maintain a disciplined reserve workforce in the meantime. When business starts to re-hire, they may find it difficult to find qualified staff, because part of the workforce drifted off in the meantime, some got mental problems, or alcohol/ādrug problems, some were radicalized, beside the agony suffered by the laid-off staff and destabilization faced by the society, it also becomes more expensive for the business to find qualified staff when they need them. Of course you can say that itās the governmentās job to take care for the unemployed, but of course government has to raise taxes for its social programs. If business actively co-shapes, it can make such programs more effective and efficient, have the reserve workforce trained in the way they can better find a job or start self-employment/āstart-up that can better meet the needs of the economy, and that at a lower cost.
I donāt think you (or the chatbot that helped you with that reply) understand what āUBIā means. UBI is the proposal that everyone is given a fixed basic income, funded from taxes, unconditional upon anything. No means tests, no requirement to do anything to qualify, nothing. Everyone gets it, no matter what their circumstances. It might coexist with other welfare schemes, but those are not part of UBI.
It doesnāt make sense to argue about definitions. If you define UBI so, then so does UBI mean for you. Iām actively pushing for a redefinition of UBI, or reshaping the policy as I said, because I thinks itās the right thing to do.
Did I reply in so perfect English that it sounded like corrected by ChatGPT? Cheer to my English, which has improved so much! š„
This is not about what UBI āmeans to meā, but about what the basic idea is that everyone but you calls āUBIā. The basic idea is to sweep away all of the various special-case means-tested benefits that require armies of staff to implement, and replace them by a single one that is paid to everyone. Are you alive? Are you a citizen? Then you get the UBI. Thatās it. That is the fundamental idea.
You can advocate for different welfare systems involving means tests and training vouchers and food stamps and businesses lobbying for this and that, but you donāt get to call that a āredefinitionā of UBI, any more than you can redefine āblueā to mean the colour of bananas or āFranceā to mean Australia.
I donāt deny that many, maybe the majority, view UBI as unconditional. But to say ALL define UBI this way is a really strong statement, do you have any proof?
Here an example I found on Britannica:
Ugandaās UBI trial, the Youth Opportunities Program, enabled participants to invest in skills training as well as tools and materials, resulting in an increase of business assets by 57%, work hours by 17%, and earnings by 38%.
Christopher Blattman et al., āGenerating Skilled Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Uganda,ā ssrn.com, Nov. 14, 2013
Link: https://āāwww.britannica.com/āāprocon/āāuniversal-basic-income-UBI-debate
The article you link begins by bluntly saying, āUniversal basic income (UBI) is an unconditional cash payment given at regular intervals by the government to all residents, regardless of their earnings or employment status.ā Yes! That is what UBI is! It continues, āUBI remains largely theoretical and, thus, does not have much of a history.ā Yes! That is also true!
Various partial versions have been tried to a limited extent. But the Blattman et al paper the article cites does not claim to have anything to do with UBI. Neither āUBIā nor āuniversalā occur anywhere in that paper, and the welfare scheme it studies is nothing like UBI. The reference is irrelevant to the encyclopedia article, which has no business calling it āUgandaās UBI trialā.
Have Encyclopedia Britannica sunk so low as to use chatbots to write for them? Eheu!
If definition was so important to me, I could argue with you what unconditional really means and if the unsupervised Uganda program falls under the definition of UBI even when itās only granted to applicants with a valid proposal. But I give up, you win. And I donāt have to defend Britannica, because itās so well established.