Universal basic income: Plans drawn up for £1,600 a month trial in England https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65806599
This sort of thing makes my blood boil. We're turning into a nation of feckless, workshy scroungers. Pretty soon there will be no-one left doing any work to pay for these layabouts that have no intention of doing a day's work. It seems all you have to these days is claim you're suffering from mental health issues or back pain and you can live the rest of your life on the State's benevolence, with no fear of a face-to-face interview to justify your claims. We should ship them off to India, or similar, where if you don't work you don't eat, and see how many suddenly made a miraculous recovery.
This isn't a benefit per se. If the world progresses as people suspect then eventually technology will do most of, if not all of everything. So there won't be jobs as we know them and so people will need some form of income. The world is changing, more people work remotely and companies are starting to implement 4 day weeks with the same salary for less hours.
The thing is if you go down this path, anyone who does any work whatsoever - even if it’s just an hour a day Monday to Friday will need to be paid a monthly minimum take home of £1,600 + £xxx to cover their expenses for getting to and from work. If not why will they be bothered. Then the regular Joe’s who are out 12 hours a day and bring home £1,600 after tax/expenses are going to say why should I bother? I can stay home see the kids, go fishing, whatever and be no worse off. It’s f@#king mental. Adopt this policy and you might as well abandon years of schooling apart from the three R’s until you’re able to write your name, read your bank statement and recognise the denominations of currency.
This is an experiment to see what people do i.e. do they save it, do they reduce their work hours etc.? As I said above the "vision" is that most people won't be working. Robots, AI etc will do the work. I suppose that they could just make everything free, but then you would get the normal trolls who would just extract the urine. It's all about a changing world, we no longer work from dawn to dusk 7 days a week. First Sunday became a day off, then people got Holy Days off as well, eventually we ended up with a 5 day working week of 37.5 hours, and now 4 day 30 hour weeks for the same salary are being introduced. Eventually it will all be leisure/free time but it won't be an instant process and along the way various groups of people will not be working in any sense that we think of as the jobs just won't be there.
I understand the future will change things workload wise (when the machines take over) but we are a long way from that technically and legislation wise. I just see that this experiment is going to peeve a lot of people off right now.
You might not work seven days a week dawn til dusk but I pretty much do because no one wants to do my line of work as it involves hard graft Let’s see AI dig out and repair a water main an electric cable or an internet line impossible I’d say As for 1600 payment an absolute joke as far as I can see no incentive nowadays to learn train work hard and enjoy the fruits of your labour and to top it off they keep moving the retirement age out,we’re all going to hell in a handcart
This is the key point people don't see... we've been steadily working less and less for centuries. [Acknowledge there are outliers, hats off to @Manofsteel ] Academic studies of a 4-day week have been very successful, e.g. UK four-day week trial hailed as a ‘major breakthrough’ as 92% of companies keep the shorter week | Euronews Obviously academic studies are just that... a little too 'sanitised' to be entirely representative and accurate... but nonetheless, the direction of travel is clear. Hopefully we can all spend the extra day off exercising and looking after ourselves, not drinking/eating/w*nking ourselves to oblivion
Technology has been making peoples jobs obsolete for centuries, we just adapt and create different jobs. I'm sure we'll all work less and the really mundane stuff will disappear but on the whole I think we'll still all have things to do and our pay structures in society will remain.
Agree I’m the same And two in my close don’t work Claim mental health but one gets about in his car everyday and loves his joints And the other spends £50 a day on scratch cards and grows his joints I’m out at six and back at the other six
AI and the like will only make the rich better off, a few more billion for elon musk , my working week has increased since I started work in 1980, there is a lot of jobs that will never be replaced by a robot, I don't think I will be working long when I am freezing my tits off working outside in winter thinking someone else was being paid for staying at home, I will join them
