Know what UBI is. I was just pointing out that it does not have to lower disposable incomes of workers.

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A significant benefit of a UBI is it removing the risk of starving to death for making a mistake. You simply can’t give up an income without either (a) putting together significant savings first, to catch you if you fall, or (b) gambling with your life, so many people are prevented from ever taking big risks in the first place. It doesn’t seem reasonable that only the upper-middle class actually has good risky ideas, which means we’re leaving good ideas on the table because people can’t wait 20 years to put together a year of savings.

So that’s why “take it and then give it back” isn’t ridiculous – because it means that when we don’t have anything to take, for whatever reason, we’ll already have the “give it back” part going and ready to depend on.

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The point is that for a lot of people, including myself and (I would guess) Tracy W, UBI connotationally means a major expansion of (edit: net) transfers.

Actually, to me the first connotation of a UBI is a massive cut in payments to the poorest, as all the actual costings I’ve seen include this.

Anonymous:

the merit here is not so much that people will quit low-paid, dirty, and dangerous jobs, as that dirty and dangerous jobs will stop being low-paid because they still need to get done

If you are paying more money to people doing low-paid, dirty and dangerous jobs, then either you have to cut costs elsewhere, or raise prices, or cut profits (if a private company). So, for example, if a government now has to pay more to its nursing aide workers then it might cut back on the patients’ food bills, or visits from doctors, or perhaps road maintenance (affecting demand for road workers), or raise taxes. A business might also cut back on quality, or raise prices, or reduce profits. If a business reduces profits it reduces the income of its shareholders, including in the cases of public companies, pension funds, so in other words, lower pension payouts.

So, you’ve raised the price of what people buy with their incomes, and/or you’ve raised taxes and/or you’ve lowered investment earnings. That’s going to have effects, people will cut back somewhere else.

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Same goes for basket weaving, making arrowheads, strangling small woodland animals, etc.

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I’m currently obsessed with the Zelenka Miserere.

Lully is good. I can’t seem to find individual videos, but here is a full opera I like. You can probably just click anywhere in the middle, it’s all good.

There’s Monteverdi to die for. Try this and this.

A professor of mine played this in a lecture and there was a stunned silence.

But basically it all comes down to Bach. Specifically, Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach. This interpretation of “Ich ruf zu dir” has got to be one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever encountered. (Sorry for the spotify link, but it has to be that particular recording.) The Magnificat is pretty popular but we’re straying into dangerously un-hipster territory.

This is all vocal music, because I mostly acquire new repertoire by performing it, but I’m sure there’s good non-vocal stuff out there. I hear Cavalli wrote stuff for strings. Also, Buxtedude wrote some mildly famous works for the organ. (His actual name was Buxtehude but no one calls him that.)

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