Unpopular Opinions You Hold

[Colourmy]

2 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

Start with the £264bn spent on welfare, get the rest from increased tax.

Increased tax from what? We drag about 700 billion a year now through tax, so give 17k to 50 million adults equals circa £850 billion. Remove welfare and pensions from current spending and I just cannot see how it would work, we'd need about £1.5 trillion just to operate.

 

It's codswallop/fantastical/ boulderdash etc. 

[Webbo]

4 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

There is a significant subculture of people living more simple alternative lifestyles. They obviously don’t get advertised much because they’re bad capitalists - very naughty - but I reckon a lot more people would do it if they had the balls to step out of line.

 

Have you done that?

[Colourmy]

3 minutes ago, Webbo said:

Have you done that?

I think he means weed smoking, Newbury bypass Swampy types that insure an old van from Mum and Dad's allowance and just stare at the stars all night.

[Rogstanley]

12 minutes ago, Webbo said:

Have you done that?

Done what?

[Rogstanley]

8 minutes ago, Colourmy said:

I think he means weed smoking, Newbury bypass Swampy types that insure an old van from Mum and Dad's allowance and just stare at the stars all night.

Exactly the type of dismissive mockery the capitalists want you to come out with.

[Webbo]

Just now, Rogstanley said:

Done what?

Chosen to live a simple alternative lifestyle?

[Rogstanley]

15 minutes ago, Colourmy said:

Increased tax from what? We drag about 700 billion a year now through tax, so give 17k to 50 million adults equals circa £850 billion. Remove welfare and pensions from current spending and I just cannot see how it would work, we'd need about £1.5 trillion just to operate.

 

It's codswallop/fantastical/ boulderdash etc. 

I don’t know where or if it has been stated exactly how much money everyone would get. But the welfare budget spread equally would be more than £4K per year for every person in the uk straight away. The rest would, presumably, be raised via tax on the basis that tax is the primary way in which the state raises money. 

[Webbo]

Just now, Rogstanley said:

I don’t know where or if it has been stated exactly how much money everyone would get. But the welfare budget spread equally would be more than £4K per year for every person in the uk straight away. The rest would, presumably, be raised via tax on the basis that tax is the primary way in which the state raises money. 

That welfare budget is already raised by tax, £4000 per year is less than £80 pw.

[Rogstanley]

1 minute ago, Webbo said:

Chosen to live a simple alternative lifestyle?

In some ways yes but I’m not fully committed because I don’t have the balls to gamble on being financially insecure, which is something I feel increasingly sure I will regret when I get old.

[Rogstanley]

8 minutes ago, Webbo said:

That welfare budget is already raised by tax, £4000 per year is less than £80 pw.

I’m aware of both of those points.

[Colourmy]

5 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

I don’t know where or if it has been stated exactly how much money everyone would get. But the welfare budget spread equally would be more than £4K per year for every person in the uk straight away. The rest would, presumably, be raised via tax on the basis that tax is the primary way in which the state raises money. 

I believe the figure is a think tanks idea of what is acceptable for an adult to live on. £80 pounds a week is not far off what the folk that don't fancy working already get.

[Rogstanley]

Just now, Colourmy said:

I believe the figure is a think tanks idea of what is acceptable for an adult to live on. £80 pounds a week is not far off what the folk that don't fancy working already get.

I imagine it’d have to be about the equivalent of minimum wage.

[Webbo]

13 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

I imagine it’d have to be about the equivalent of minimum wage.

So full time that's around £300 pw, knocking on 4 times the present welfare budget. How much would taxes have to go up and who would pay it if they didn't have any need to go work?

[Rogstanley]

5 minutes ago, Webbo said:

So full time that's around £300 pw, knocking on 4 times the present welfare budget. How much would taxes have to go up and who would pay it if they didn't have any need to go work?

I would imagine business would pay most of the extra tax. Keep in mind that UBI is usually talked about in the context of being a solution to the problem of mass unemployment caused by automation, robots, ai etc. In that scenario you’d have a massively increased welfare bill anyway. 

 

Assuming that mass unemployment does happen (I know it might not, but just assume it will), how would you fund the increased welfare bill? 

[Strokes]

7 hours ago, Buce said:

 

The only person you can really trust is yourself.

But which voice is the right one?

[Webbo]

5 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

I would imagine business would pay most of the extra tax. Keep in mind that UBI is usually talked about in the context of being a solution to the problem of mass unemployment caused by automation, robots, ai etc. In that scenario you’d have a massively increased welfare bill anyway. 

 

Assuming that mass unemployment does happen (I know it might not, but just assume it will), how would you fund the increased welfare bill? 

Why would businesses set up here if we had put up taxes by a massive amount to pay for UBI?

 

They've been telling us that automation would do away with jobs since as long as I can remember and yet we have record levels of employment. How would I fund welfare if automation does put us all out of work? I don't know but the problem won't be solved by magic thinking.

[Rogstanley]

4 minutes ago, Webbo said:

Why would businesses set up here if we had put up taxes by a massive amount to pay for UBI?

 

They've been telling us that automation would do away with jobs since as long as I can remember and yet we have record levels of employment. How would I fund welfare if automation does put us all out of work? I don't know but the problem won't be solved by magic thinking.

I think the idea is that UBI would be implemented in most countries, since most countries would be facing the same unemployment challenge.

 

Remember too that in this scenario the nature of businesses have changed, they’re employing very few people and consequently have much lower costs. They can only continue to make money if they have customers, so they may well find that contributing extra tax in order to fund UBI is a good business decision.

 

I don’t think mass unemployment is coming either so this is just a thought experiment for me. But if it does happen then someone will need to come up with a solution. It’s easy to sit there and say this won’t work and that won’t work - anyone can do that. It’s much harder to come up with workable solutions, so I say fair play to people having a go with ideas like UBI. History is littered with ideas people said couldn’t work actually working brilliantly well.

[Innovindil]

You can suck on my sweaty nutsack if you think I'm living off £80 a week. Get in the bin you sodding hippies. 

[Rogstanley]

29 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

You can suck on my sweaty nutsack if you think I'm living off £80 a week. Get in the bin you sodding hippies. 

Literally nobody said that you would have to live on £80 per week. You don’t seem to have understood the idea or the conversation about it very well at all.

 

Dont let that stop you throwing insults around though, your capitalist masters will be pleased with you. You’re a good little slave boy.

Edited 20 February 2018 by Rogstanley

[Innovindil]

1 hour ago, Rogstanley said:

Literally nobody said that you would have to live on £80 per week. You don’t seem to have understood the idea or the conversation about it very well at all.

 

Dont let that stop you throwing insults around though, your capitalist masters will be pleased with you. You’re a good little slave boy.

I'd much rather be a slave with everything I could wish for, than a free hippie with **** all. 

[Jon the Hat]

13 hours ago, Rogstanley said:

Another line of enquiry is the fact that suicide rates have increased as the world has got richer.

 

I believe it has also been demonstrated that income equality is a better predictor of happiness than per capita gdp in a nation.

There is undoubtedly a lot wrong in society, I'm not denying that.  There are also a lot of idiots who have no idea what life is like for a lot of people.  See the twat in Bristol Conservative association who tweeted that if you can't feed your  family for £10 a week you don't know how to feed your family, on the back of Jack Monroe somehow doing it in 2014 for a short period.

[Rogstanley]

9 hours ago, Innovindil said:

I'd much rather be a slave with everything I could wish for, than a free hippie with **** all. 

You haven't got everything you could wish for though have you. And you never will, not because you aren't or won't do well in life, but because the more we have the more we want.

[Innovindil]

3 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

You haven't got everything you could wish for though have you. And you never will, not because you aren't or won't do well in life, but because the more we have the more we want.

That's some beautiful psycobabble. Shame it doesn't actually mean anything. Right now, this very second, there isn't a single thing where I'm saying to myself "I wish I had that, but I just can't afford it". I don't live my life in envy. 

[Milo]

4 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

You haven't got everything you could wish for though have you. And you never will, not because you aren't or won't do well in life, but because the more we have the more we want.

You seem to come across as a fairly bright type - and  I assume that you're familiar with Maslows Hierarchy of Needs theories....I'm not too sure that your statement above fits in to this. Once their D needs are met, then there are a whole group,of people who are entirely satisfied with what they have. 

 

[Jon the Hat]

1 minute ago, Milo said:

You seem to come across as a fairly bright type - and  I assume that you're familiar with Maslows Hierarchy of Needs theories....I'm not too sure that your statement above fits in to this. Once their D needs are met, then there are a whole group,of people who are entirely satisfied with what they have. 

 

Maslow was right in the absence of powerful external factors which are designed to make us consume shit we don't really need.