Universal Basic Income - How would it change your life

The talk of UBI yesterday in the politics thread was quite interesting and if this was to be introduced at £20k per year how would it change your life? Would you retrain, just enjoy the extra income and piss it up on fags and booze or would you quit your job and live a life of luxury in a house full of flat screen TV's?

For me personally I think I would want to tackle my mortgage and increase my savings for later life but down the line maybe reduce my working days so I'm working less but I feel what I would do wouldn't be what the government wants.

My wife really doesn't like her job so it would give her a chance to leave that and try something else without having to worry about a salary drop so much.

I'd probably put half of it per year into my mortgage and the rest as savings/spending money. I quite like my job and am well paid so UBI ontop of it would make things very comfortable for me honestly.

I think I would be quite worried about it stopping so would probably just try and save any extra I got and keep working. If I wasn't I think I might quite work and start trying to work on my own projects. Always wanted to make a computer game also would like to do some electrical stuff maybe some vertical farming.

Lex-Man wrote:I think I would be quite worried about it stopping so would probably just try and save any extra I got and keep working.

Yeah, I can imagine the fear of it being taken away (or heavily reduced) by a future Tory government would be a very real fear.

I'd also worry about what would happen to the cost of living if companies/landlords thought "everyone has more money, let's price gouge the plebs!".

But, assuming the above fears are unfounded, it would transform the lives of tens of millions of people. Everybody having enough money to eat, pay their bills, keep a roof over their heads and spare cash to enjoy would be amazing.

I guess personally I'd be tempted to reduce my working hours. It'd be nice to do less work while also being comfortable financially.

I’d be annoyed at the £20k a year drop in salaries offered by private companies to offset it.

jiggles wrote:I’d be annoyed at the £20k a year drop in salaries offered by private companies to offset it.

Oh gooseberry fool I'm going to have to pay work for the privilege aren't I!

jiggles wrote:I’d be annoyed at the £20k a year drop in salaries offered by private companies to offset it.

in that case, simply ask your boss to double your salary

It would allow me to have better financial stability, and thus build up some savings.

I'd also have more free time to do my YouTube work.

jiggles wrote:I’d be annoyed at the £20k a year drop in salaries offered by private companies to offset it.

I'm not sure that would happen. With everyone getting £20k per year, employers would have to make far more of an effort to attract people to work for them.

Moggy wrote:
Lex-Man wrote:I think I would be quite worried about it stopping so would probably just try and save any extra I got and keep working.

Yeah, I can imagine the fear of it being taken away (or heavily reduced) by a future Tory government would be a very real fear.

I'd also worry about what would happen to the cost of living if companies/landlords thought "everyone has more money, let's price gouge the plebs!".

But, assuming the above fears are unfounded, it would transform the lives of tens of millions of people. Everybody having enough money to eat, pay their bills, keep a roof over their heads and spare cash to enjoy would be amazing.

I guess personally I'd be tempted to reduce my working hours. It'd be nice to do less work while also being comfortable financially.

Or they just won't increase the amounts so it would be cut by inflation.

Talking of inflation, that would soar if everyone suddenly had £20k extra per year.

I don't think either my wife or I would bin work off entirely. I already work part time for childcare reasons and both my wife and I like our jobs and feel committed to them for non-financial reasons.

I think we'd end up saving quite a lot of it and would perhaps make a lump sum payment on our mortgage at some point. I would be quite keen to explore making our life more energy efficient and sustainable so I'd install solar panels, heat pumps, get an electric car, or even just optimise our insulation. All of this would pay financial dividends in the medium-long term to reduce what we would need to pay out of our salary/UBI.

In terms of enjoying the money we'd probably be able to go on more/more extravagant holidays which would be nice. I'd buy a new computer. I could probably afford to buy a new GPU every year which is just not necessary so I'd have to be careful not to waste money. I do think I'd move away from the more budget options for cheaper purchases. For instance, I'd be more likely to just buy the thing I want rather than a cheaper brand off Amazon which would last less well.

I think one of the limitations of the study which is currently making the news is that nobody on an 18 month trial is going to quit their job. It will be hard to model the likelihood of this happening. Also, I wonder if a lot of it would just go into savings or pensions and would be viewed more like a lottery or game show win rather than an actual change to how individuals are able to live long term.

I would move to working 3 or 4 days a week and spend more time doing other hobbies.

rinks wrote:Talking of inflation, that would soar if everyone suddenly had £20k extra per year.

That's not how inflation works. That would only happen if everyone increased prices, but I'm assuming there would be stops/checks in place to prevent that.

Isn't inflation essentially where the price of things go up meaning your purchasing power goes down? If anything it should reduce inflation as everyone will have more purchasing power.

I'd save half of it and spend the other half on nice things for the family.

Qikz wrote:
rinks wrote:Talking of inflation, that would soar if everyone suddenly had £20k extra per year.

That's not how inflation works. That would only happen if everyone increased prices, but I'm assuming there would be stops/checks in place to prevent that.

Isn't inflation essentially where the price of things go up meaning your purchasing power goes down? If anything it should reduce inflation as everyone will have more purchasing power.

Car sales already have cost-push inflation. What do you think will happen if you add in demand-pull?

Qikz wrote:
rinks wrote:Talking of inflation, that would soar if everyone suddenly had £20k extra per year.

That's not how inflation works. That would only happen if everyone increased prices, but I'm assuming there would be stops/checks in place to prevent that.

Isn't inflation essentially where the price of things go up meaning your purchasing power goes down? If anything it should reduce inflation as everyone will have more purchasing power.

Inflation is usually caused by either demand being greater supply or when production costs increase (which is what is driving current inflation). So for UBI the concern is demand would increase because people have more money and therefore cause inflation.

I think this is quite a complex question without a definitive answer and you'll get different responses from different people if you look into it. I think it would depend on the monetary policies undertaken by the Government to fund/support it.

Carry on with my job for 5 years, but save every penny of that and continue my pension payments, then use the universal income as my main money. After 5 years, sell the house and have a stupid amount of money to then retire in my 40s.

Qikz wrote:
rinks wrote:Talking of inflation, that would soar if everyone suddenly had £20k extra per year.

That's not how inflation works. That would only happen if everyone increased prices, but I'm assuming there would be stops/checks in place to prevent that.

Isn't inflation essentially where the price of things go up meaning your purchasing power goes down? If anything it should reduce inflation as everyone will have more purchasing power.

Adding a load of money into the economy while enforcing price caps just devalues your currency does it not? That would cause inflation on imports to rocket if nothing else.

Work to pay off the mortgage and then reassess at that point.

Universal Basic Income - How would it change your life

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