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0 pointsEricson23149y ago0 comments

Wat.

- UBI's lack of criteria is supposed to remove distortions. The population is minimaly incentivized.

- Employers loose leverage with UBI; large companies are major employers.

- Everybody loves to hate on population size, but shrinking/aging populations are dangerous for the economy. It's a much more complex problem.

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steakeater9y ago

You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government). In most places, the employers own the government anyway as they provide the revenue.

I don't know what your first point means. Your last point, you are just repeating what you have read somewhere. Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not.

Also stop being childish with your "wat" bullshit.

Ericson2314OP9y ago

> In most places, the employers own the government anyway as they provide the revenue.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-source... corporate tax is only 10%. They are far to influential, but not because this.

> You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government).

> I don't know what your first point means.

This I believe is the misunderstanding. UBI is designed so nothing you do will affect your basic income; there are no conditions. Yes, on the meta-level the UBI policy itself could be changed, but assuming it won't the government has no extra leverage over the citizens.

> Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not.

I meant:

- Slowing population growth and longer life expediencies (Europe, Japan, US might catch up a little bit) together result in more old people as a portion of the total population. Some argue this is dangerous for the welfare state.

- More population growth crates more demand and helps economy grow.

You can similarly argue growing economies are bad for human and environmental health because more economic activity conventionally means pollution. For example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/14/resea... (sorry for the sensational headline). But growing economies are also very good in other ways.

It would be great if we could have "barber poll" economies and populations that always grow yet stay the same size, but calculus does not allow for this.

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