> Can anyone explain to me how UBI is actually paid for.
The great thing about UBI money is that most of it would go straight back into the economy. That mom who has been putting off getting the AC fixed might pay a repairman to sort it out, a daughter is given money to buy her dad a birthday present, maybe the guy that's been putting off getting that weird lump checked out because he has no insurance goes to the doctor. Much of the value is therefore immediately recaptured through tax, and contributes towards the wages of the people they're interacting with.
> who will do the work that nobody wants to do if we no longer need to work?
Generally the wages for some of those kinds of jobs will rise to counter how undesirable they are. Some types of work may end up disappearing, office workers might be forced to dust their own desks. I think this is a much more moral and desirable outcome than the current situation where we rely on putting people in a position where they are forced into degrading, disgusting, or dangerous work. All too often that work is then used to belittle and degrade those people further.
> The great thing about UBI money is that most of it would go straight back into the economy.
Your first part of the comment sounds like the Broken Window Fallacy and doesn’t answer the question.
> I think this is a much more moral and desirable outcome than the current situation where we rely on putting people in a position where they are forced into degrading, disgusting, or dangerous work. All too often that work is then used to belittle and degrade those people further.
Nice in theory, until you need a plumber for a broken toilet 3am on a Tuesday but nobody is a plumber anymore
(That’s speaking from experience working in the harsher conditions in the plumbing industry)
> Your first part of the comment sounds like the Broken Window Fallacy and doesn’t answer the question.
Then you only read half of it. The question is how would it be paid for, and the answer I gave is that most of it would be paid for through increased tax revenue from increased economic activity. This is topped up by removing spending on the beauraucracy involved in means testing.
> Nice in theory, until you need a plumber for a broken toilet 3am on a Tuesday but nobody is a plumber anymore
UBI doesn't prevent anyone from being an emergency plumber, you just have to pay them enough that the task is actually worth doing rather than what they've been forced into accepting.
The great thing about UBI money is that most of it would go straight back into the economy. That mom who has been putting off getting the AC fixed might pay a repairman to sort it out, a daughter is given money to buy her dad a birthday present, maybe the guy that's been putting off getting that weird lump checked out because he has no insurance goes to the doctor. Much of the value is therefore immediately recaptured through tax, and contributes towards the wages of the people they're interacting with.
> who will do the work that nobody wants to do if we no longer need to work?
Generally the wages for some of those kinds of jobs will rise to counter how undesirable they are. Some types of work may end up disappearing, office workers might be forced to dust their own desks. I think this is a much more moral and desirable outcome than the current situation where we rely on putting people in a position where they are forced into degrading, disgusting, or dangerous work. All too often that work is then used to belittle and degrade those people further.