Society where a majority requires UBI to live is going to be a perfect situation for any state—this means that the majority knows that without the state, it gets nothing. Soon, they are going to start hating the productive minority.
Tax the productive guy maximum he can bear, give part of that to the masses, keep part for yourself. No democratic change possible because the majority needs UBI and would kill to keep it. No popular revolution either.
It’s not that unlike the current welfare state model, just taken to its logical conclusion. One of the problems of the welfare state—from the government’s perspective—is that many people see eg. public pensions and money from make-work as something they earned, rather than something that they get from the state, which makes it much harder to vilify the actual producers.
Germany’s welfare state has unlimited unemployment benefits that are actually a lot like a UBI. It is basically 400 Euros plus rent for a cheap place. There’s a lot of nagging and hoops to jump through from the agency that gives you the money, but as long as you do those you never need to work.
And still, Germany’s unemployment rate is 4,2% right now, the US unemployment rate is 4,9%. How do you explain that?
Setting aside various other implausibilities in your comment, I remark that what does the work here is not a majority getting UBI but a majority having no other way to live. In other words, assuming you to be right about everything else, what a state would need to do to get into this allegedly delightful condition is not to provide UBI to its citizens but to deprive its citizens of any other way of getting the necessities of life.
Society where a majority requires UBI to live is going to be a perfect situation for any state—this means that the majority knows that without the state, it gets nothing. Soon, they are going to start hating the productive minority. Tax the productive guy maximum he can bear, give part of that to the masses, keep part for yourself. No democratic change possible because the majority needs UBI and would kill to keep it. No popular revolution either.
It’s not that unlike the current welfare state model, just taken to its logical conclusion. One of the problems of the welfare state—from the government’s perspective—is that many people see eg. public pensions and money from make-work as something they earned, rather than something that they get from the state, which makes it much harder to vilify the actual producers.
Germany’s welfare state has unlimited unemployment benefits that are actually a lot like a UBI. It is basically 400 Euros plus rent for a cheap place. There’s a lot of nagging and hoops to jump through from the agency that gives you the money, but as long as you do those you never need to work.
And still, Germany’s unemployment rate is 4,2% right now, the US unemployment rate is 4,9%. How do you explain that?
Setting aside various other implausibilities in your comment, I remark that what does the work here is not a majority getting UBI but a majority having no other way to live. In other words, assuming you to be right about everything else, what a state would need to do to get into this allegedly delightful condition is not to provide UBI to its citizens but to deprive its citizens of any other way of getting the necessities of life.