UBI vs Australia's Social Programmes

Politics International Politics
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I’m saying universal basic income because in a few decades, people with any jobs whatsoever may actually be a minority. Companies are cutting jobs left and right when they can. All that money is going to businesses who gets bigger and bigger. The money is going to come from them. Either they pay a tax, or they hire people for BS jobs just to keep them employed at a livable wage.

Jobs getting cut aren’t even service jobs (which seems to offer higher and higher salaries, seen shopping malls offering 45,000+ a month, and a decade back it was half that!), but jobs that actually paid big bucks, like software engineering. You know for code optimization or whatever software engineers do. Companies just realized they could use GPT like engine to do them instead of paying someone. This could have a knock on effect and will severely disrupt the market. Bars and clubs for example kinda depend on those guys to spend money there. If they’re out of work and having to work increasingly hard for the same standard of living, bars and clubs would go as well.

But wealth concentrated in the hands of the few is not good for any country.

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So, back on topic, if the current tax surplus is redistributed again, how do you think that should happen? In other words:

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I think universally seem to be the fairest option. Because requiring people to prove they are poor just defeats it. Means tested benefits are extremely hard to get in Taiwan.

And remember, just as a sales tax is regressive in that it punishes the poor, a universal payment helps the poor the most, and it helps the rich less.

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Not redistributing it in cash is best. This shouldn’t become an expectation. The government should just reinvest all of it in infrastructure or defense.

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I guess if they did it a second time it might well become one. And it’s not like they can turn around and ask everyone (i.e., Taiwanese citizens and APRC holders) for some extra money in years where tax revenue is lower than expected!

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The next year they can easily get it back by not giving certain rebates or adjusting tax rates or actually enforcing tax collection .
This year the tax exempt portion will.ocnrease again which is good…I’m a believer in low taxes but this country needs to invest more in defense and environmental protection.

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Not needed. Australia has en excessively generous social program. It makes people lazy and entitled.
It makes people on minimum wage (and remember, Australia has the world’s highest minimum wage) say things like ‘Why should I go to work when I can just go on the dole?’ - I’ve heard my mum say this all my life.

It makes people on a higher wage, particularly those who earned it, like me say ‘Why an I paying all this tax so Jo Blo can sit at home and do nothing?’ - I say this nearly every time I get paid
Australia’s taxation system is heavily reliant on income taxes, its very visible how much of your money the government gets.

I have complained a lot about Taiwan’s government but the labour insurance system is something I think it does very well.
You only benefits from it if you pay into it, as it should be. Some benefits are time limited and designed to only help for a short period. I think it’s a great system. Taiwan does not provide much feee money to people. Taiwan supports those that contribute and the back up systems are for people who can’t contribute not won’t contribute.

If you don’t contribute to a system, you shouldn’t benefit from it. If you do contribute, you should.

People have said that technology would replace workers since the dawn of time. Technology, and capitalism, have overwhelmingly made the world as a whole a wealthier, healthier and wiser place.

Email has been around for decades. Pretty much every country still has a national postal service and fedEx posted a profit of $1.8billion USD in 2022 and employs 530,000ish people

Netflix came to Australia in 2015, Free to Air TV channel 9 made a profit of $195 million AUD last year and employs about 5,000 people

Airline E-ticketing started 1994 around the same time the internet was getting big and everyone predicted the end of the travel agent. The Flight Centre Travel group made a modest profit of $33 million AUD last financial year 30 years after the ‘end of the travel agent’ and finally bouncing back from COVID losses and employs about 22,000 people

Banking in Australia offers almost all services online, branches and tellers are not really needed. Australia’s biggest bank, the Commonwealth Bank, still employs 11,000 people

And even if AI did get to a point that it could replace a worker in some industries, the economy would shift to support jobs people want to do and want to pay for, as it always has. Provided decent governance of course

Netflix is a good example of this. Video stores don’t really exist now but they’ve been replaced by streaming services that are cheaper than what video hiring was. Netflix still employs people. Economies shifted to support what the people wanted

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Or maybe UBI just stops employers from taking advantage of desperate workers by paying them peanuts because they can?

It’s more like “Why should I work this shit job for shit wages when I got better things I should do?”.

But it appears in Taiwan most the tax comes from taxes on businesses. Income tax wouldn’t be a thing if just about everything is automated or AI generated if most people don’t have a job. Taiwan isn’t Australia.

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How? And who pays for it, the people who actually work?

No but it’s a capitalist economy same as any other.

And also you’re right. Australia has MORE automation and HIGHER wages. Almost like technology helped :roll_eyes:

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I heard they even have robot koalas there now.

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It’s about tax revenue and how to spend it. You mentioned giving money to people who didn’t earn it.

People who pay the taxes don’t want it spent on people who didn’t earn it.

You mentioned AI ‘taking people’s jobs’, something that’s been claimed for hundreds of years (in the way of technology)

I just answered why history and current circumstances show why that is a bad idea and isn’t the case.

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I heard it was in response to the general labor shortage. Just not enough with the proper koalifications

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The drop bears aren’t happy they’re taking their jobs

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So you think people who works hard but gets paid little because their employers can, didn’t “earn more”?

Or that people earned their money and didn’t come into it by other means?

What about tax on businesses who just pays a low wage because they can?

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None of those questions have anything to do with what I said but OK I’ll bite.

Either unionise or elect a government that cares about workers.

Employers have a profit motive. It is up to employees and to an extent government to ensure fairness.

Or even better. Find a new job. Not rocket science.

If you mean inherited than it would have been earned by someone, it was up to that person to choose what to do with THEIR money.

If you mean illegal means then that is a matter for the police and irrelevant.

Unless you’re saying that the tax revenue should be spent on better law enforcement in which case I agree.

Why not just increase the minimum wage? Or unionise? Much less trouble and less risk.
And if you increase taxes too much the money will run away to another country with lower taxes and everyone loses.

I’m an employee same as any other. I’m not special

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So you disapprove of these government moves to simply redistribute the extra taxes and should instead spend it on military or something?

Funny because conservatives are also against increasing minimum wage, and from your posts, you sound incredibly right winged.

As for unions, none exist in Taiwan that I know of. How do you expect workers here to unionize?

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I disapprove of taking money away from people who earn it and giving it to people who didn’t. How is that fair? Why should people who earn more, and contribute more, be punished?

Either that or just reduce taxes.

Well you don’t know me very well. I have never voted for a conservative government. I vote for whoever has the best policies for me. I do not vote for the same party every election.
I’m pro-worker, pro-business, pro-fairness. I’m ant-entitled, anti-freeloading, anti-lazy.

Which is why I said ‘unionise’… what’s your point?

I’ve worked for minimum wage before, it’s a choice not an inevitability.

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