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ChristianKl comments on Open Thread June 6 - June 12, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Welfare payment in Germany aren't basic income because people need to active look for a job to receive them.
Those payments are also non-garnishable. The don't exist to finance loans. The point of basic income isnt to give people collateral for loans but to provide them with money to cover their basic needs.
If you want a higher income of say 1500$ you can make 1000$ non-garishable so that the person can always cover their basic need and make the rest garnishable.
True, but Germany has big tax breaks for entry-level, low-income jobs - what they call MiniJobs, MidiJobs etc. So the combination of unemployment insurance (the 'welfare' you describe) and easily available work acts much like a UBI as far as low-income folks are concerned.
The United Kingdom is now trying the same strategy, but with less success: though entry-level work is untaxed and quite widely available, many people there are still living on the 'dole' and not working, perhaps because the economy is still in bad shape and this lowers wages/worsens working conditions. A low-level UBI would be a nice solution to this issue.
No, UBI means that you get money even if you decide against working. That's inherently different than conditional welfare payments.
There nothing unconditional about receiving money from an entry-level low-income job.
That's an often-quoted reason, but it's far from "generally-agreed". For one thing, there is the obvious retort to it: we'll consider UBI when the robots actually make people unable to "support themselves even by working" and not before that.
A lot of people (e.g. Charles Murray) support UBI as a less-painful alternative to the metastasizing bureaucracy of welfare, etc., and with less mis- and disincentives, too. It is basically seen as a welfare equivalent to the "taxes on a postcard" (or maybe flat tax) movement.
Various people support UBI for different reasons. It's not true that nobody in Germany calls for UBI. You might personal oppose UBI in a country like Germany but that doesn't mean that other don't want it.
Milton Friedman also wasn't concered about growing use of automation when he proposed UBI as negative taxation.
Huh? As far as I know, the "War on Poverty" policies weren't motivated by the fear that the poorest will be unable to support themselves (after all, they managed to do so throughout all the preceding times). They were motivated by the optimism and can-do attitude -- the economy was growing very well, the middle class was booming, the progress towards the shining future was inevitable, so the Federal government should help the less fortunate get on the shining-future bus.
One of the most influential politicians in favor of UBI in Germany is Dieter Althaus from the CDU (the right). I also don't think it makes sense to see billionaire Götz Werner as wanting to give his consituents free money for votes.