[Divver]

How come nobody discusses the countries which already employ universal basic income for their citizens like Saudi Arabia or the UAE?

I guess because it serves as a counter example to many of the claims of universal basic income so it’s intentionally left out of such discussions.

But basically Saudi Arabia and the UAE both have some form of universal basic income for their citizens derived mainly from their massive oil profits.

And the irony is for so much of their labor,

They use so much foreign labor that the percentage of foreign workers is actually larger than the percentage of citizens (at least in the case of UAE not sure about Saudi Arabia)

Basically almost all the labor is done by those who aren’t eligible for the universal basic income (only citizens get the universal basic income)

And their laws essentially make it impossible (or insanely difficult) to become a citizen

Because once a person becomes a citizen they are eligible for the universal basic income payouts, so you essentially get people sitting on their ass getting paychecks.

I mean I don’t see a progressive revolution of art, culture, and modernity with people “following their dreams” since they are untethered by paychecks

Happening in the UAE or Saudi Arabia which is what people say will happen if you had universal basic income.

Heck US, India, and Japan has tons of art/music/culture that they export and none of these three countries have universal basic income....

In fact sometimes I wonder if the massive oil profits played a role in keeping them so ultraconservative since it allowed them until recently to prevent half their population from getting an education and roaming/working/driving freely/indepedently around the country.

If universal basic income was so successful and didn’t kill people’s willingness to work, I feel like these two countries wouldn’t have to keep bringing in low wage foreign laborers.

Don’t get me wrong. Universal basic income sounds very cool.

But I’ll be honest if I got enough money to cover my rent/transportation/healthcare and I didn’t have any loans,

I would immediately quit my high wage tech job

And probably go to Hawaii to teach STEM to entry level college kids to prevent/reduce the number of college kids who drop out of STEM.

But instead since I have massive college loans to pay off because my parents didn’t give me a cent for college tuition or housing (they did give me food money thankfully),

I work in this extremely high wage but sometimes rather mundane “tech job”

So I can pay my college loans, housing, car, food, helping out my elderly parents, brother’s, etc.

Oh wait shoot I think I basically just said if there was universal basic income

I would end up following my dreams/passion instead of working a job mainly for the wage.

Lol whoops killed my own argument against universal basic income.

So I guess universal basic income might actually be cool haha.

But the thing is there’s no way to know how many will just sit on their ass doing nothing, how many will turn to crime or darker endeavors with all their new ideal time, and how many will actually use it effectively.

Like how can anyone do a reasonable analysis to predict the outcome of this system.

Human nature is a mysterious beast.....

I’m sorry I’m just highly skeptical on universal basic income.

It’s so counter to all the existing economic theory I was trained/educated in

That I guess it’s hard for my brain to accept it.

My apologies.

[badestrand]

Interesting points about SA and UAE. My take would be that Basic Income requires a certain level of society. Just like democracy, which requires people to be informed and free of the worries of basic needs.

>> But the thing is there’s no way to know how many will just sit on their ass doing nothing

I absolutely agree but don't see it as an argument against BI. We can just approach it slowly.

[zo1]

"Just like democracy, which requires people to be informed and free of the worries of basic needs."

The world is filled with people that are uninformed (or would disagree with your definition of "informed", even). I don't think you'd be able to find any large group of people that would make this work to a sufficient degree if we go off your premise about them being "informed".

[Divver]

Yeah I agree with you that fear of the unknown shouldn’t be a reason to not try something new.

Although for many of us (myself included from time to time), it ends up being the strongest reason to resist change, especially when you happen to already be in relatively fortunate/satisfactory position.

Lol I guess that hackneyed FDR quote about “fearing fear” was a lot more poignant than I initially thought haha.