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A three-year UBI study done in Germany shows that a guaranteed monthly check increased labor market exploration and increased work satisfaction.
(www.pilotprojekt-grundeinkommen.de)
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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I think one way to implement UBI, would be what I call a "Universal Ranked Income". Everyone gets universal benefits - shelter, utilities, food, transport, gasoline, healthcare, all of this for free. However, the items and services are very generic. This is where capitalism steps in: money is used for buying luxuries, such as a fast car, physical books, a nicer home, fancy takeout, and so forth. Capitalism is terrific for catering to an individual's tastes, but is horrible at ensuring wellbeing. Thus, the separation of necessity from luxury.
This permits people to strike or protest when they feel like it, since their survival isn't at stake. They also can wait for suitable job opportunities, which would do much to punish abusive corporations. The amount of income a person gets is based on their job rank, with students getting an amount based on their grades, while higher tier workers get fixed incomes each year, regardless of experience or location.
Absolute floors and ceilings on wealth and income can also be implemented. That would prevent the accumulation of too much wealth by individuals and corporations. Corporations won't be able to control the wages of their employees, which would also prevent inflation - people can't be paid too much or too little for working, so pricing of goods will have be done according to what income bracket a seller wants to reach.
There are so many issues with this. Unsolvable issues.
The first that I saw was basing income on grades. This means that the person who determines whether you fail or pass, also determines how much money you get. I don't think there is any good teacher out there that wants that responsibillity. So fuck that. Grades are for determining whether you pass or fail. The government should not use them for their own needs. If they so desperately want that, then let them make their own tests and grade these themselves.
The second is fixing income. If I do better than my peers, I want to be recognized for that. Otherwise, why would I put in the effort? Maybe this works for super simple jobs, like fruit picker on a farm. But anywhere where cognitive skills are required, you need to incentivise people to excel.
And that was still talking about jobs where you spend a fixed amount of time working. There are also many jobs, where it makes wayyy more sense to pay directly for delivered performance. For example: how do you fix the salary of a sex worker? Does that mean you fix the pay rate for the customers? Demand for certain people certainly won't be equal, so how do you fix that?
What about overtime? What about working during holidays/weekends? What about nightshifts? Etc.
Then there is the issues of different personal survival needs. No single set of 3 meals a day will be both allergy-safe for everyone and nutricious enough to survive for everyone. Some people live fine without a microwave, others can't live without it. Etc. Just giving people money removes the responsibility of determining what exactly is required for survival.
Then there is the issue of labor shortages. Take the Dutch childcare system for example. For many years now, the government has had the idea of lowering the prices significantly. But they can't, because the number of licensed caretakers is already not enough to fullfill demand right now, and lowering prices would skyrocket demand.
The whole point of UBI is to let the market figure out many of the solutions to these problems. Keep it simple for the government, and only regulate when and where it actually helps.
About this, I will try to find it. But there is quite some research that shows productivity in simple jobs (think assembly line, or fruit picking) goes up in relation to reward. But complex an skilled jobs actually give diminishing returns quite soon with a higher reward, because with complex jobs most of the satisfaction comes from doing the job itself and excelling not the reward.