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How would your writing career change under a Universal Basic Income?

2K views 23 replies 22 participants last post by  Becca Mills 
#1 ·
With the rise of automation and the possible implementation of a UBI, how would this disruptive change impact on your approach to building/maintaining a writing career?

If you had yours and your loved ones basic needs taken care of without the need to work or sell books, would you continue to push as hard as an indie author? Or would the implementation of a UBI make you work harder as a writer because you'd have so many hours freed up to pursue it more vigorously?

I suppose this is quite similar to the "if you won the lottery" question, but I was listening to a podcast today where they'd talked extensively about the UBI and so I began thinking of what self-publishers would do in such a scenario. Thanks for your input.
 
#4 ·
Who defines 'basic needs'?  I assume that would cover food, water, shelter and health care, but is that it?  And since expenses vary by location, does everyone get the same UBI or does it vary based on where you live?  Will people have extra money to buy books?  If there are jobs available, will those jobs pay less because you're already getting a basic income?  Will people have to work more hours in order to get spending money to buy things other than basic needs?

I think too many things would have to be answered before we might be able to guess how a UBI would affect us.
 
#5 ·
Part time at my day job, then pursue writing far harder. UBI is a big risk.

Apologies if this next comment breaks the "no politics" rule - I'm sure Betsy or someone will amend if needed, but I'll try to keep in the boundaries of my own train of thought in relation to the opening question. Okay, disclaimer over. Here goes...

I'd keep at least a part-time foot in for a while because if a party later gets voted in that opposes UBI, you lose it. So I'll keep my options open at least until my writing income covers a lot more than my basic needs. Also, if UBI doesn't yield the generational change in attitude to work that it's supposed to, even the government that introduces it may need to change it/scrap it if it becomes unworkable.
 
#10 ·
My understanding is the point of UBI is to support everyone in a world where they can't necessarily get jobs (in part due to computerisation/automation.) As someone trained in IT, where that's not such a pressing issue, I think I would stick it out for a least a few years to build up some savings. I'd love to write full time, but I don't want that to mean, for example, that I can't take a nice holiday or buy all the books I want or whatever.

If writing got to the point of supporting me financially, then it would be all I did - probably with some volunteer work as well to keep me from going stir crazy at home.
 
#11 ·
UBI could allow me to write, rather than foregoing it year after year in lieu of scraping together money I need today. My family and I have all tried our best to write and self-publish while more or less living in poverty for my entire adult life. It's a challenge.

I haven't got my hopes up, because I don't think I'll see a UBI in the United States during my lifetime (I'm 32). It would require a truly extraordinary, unprecedented break with our political and cultural history--mere facts of automation, unemployment, or inequality won't be sufficient to motivate it. We are not the Culture, and our leaders are not Minds.

I'm not really in a position to emigrate and collect UBI elsewhere, so I try not to dwell overmuch.
 
#12 ·
The currently proposed UBI schemes are thinly-disguised iterations of today's welfare schemes.

However, unlike welfare benefits, which taper off and end, UBI "benefits" (as they're currently being proposed) are perpetual. Such a scheme would likely be funded with income taxes, similar to welfare.

In any welfare system, there are two camps: receivers and providers. The latter are taxed so the former can receive benefits. If UBI were fully enacted in the U.S., I'd slowly restructure my businesses to minimize income generation and increase focus on capital gains.

In other words, I'd reduce the time spent writing books.
 
#13 ·
Writing is still very much a part-time thing for me. I just got a new day job that's remote and pays well, so I probably wouldn't quit anytime soon, but if my writing income increased to the point where I'd be in a place to consider going full-time, UBI would make that decision easier.
 
#14 ·
It seems to me that a UBI of sorts already exists making the question no longer hypothetical.

One could for example, at least in the USA just quit your job, go on unemployment. Or collect food stamps, live in Section 8 Housing, and get a welfare check every month.

Or one could convince the Social Security Administration that you have some type of disability and go on SS early.

So why wait? I suspect the answer has to do with having a sense of accomplishment at the least, that you the individual did something, made your own way through the world. You weren't satisfied with merely being good enough or like everyone else.

Whether it's writing or some other type of professional pursuit what drives us to be better is not wanting to merely settle. The world is full of those people already and I suspect some may even write "for a living."

Which just makes more room at the top for those who are driven internally.
 
#15 ·
Folks, some posts here are veering dangerously toward tripping our no-politics rule. To keep the thread open, posters will need to stick close to the OP's question: if a UBI were in place (setting aside the question of whether it's a good or bad, workable or unworkable, idea), how would it affect your writing?
 
#16 ·
Will Kurth said:
It seems to me that a UBI of sorts already exists making the question no longer hypothetical.

One could for example, at least in the USA just quit your job, go on unemployment. Or collect food stamps, live in Section 8 Housing, and get a welfare check every month.

Or one could convince the Social Security Administration that you have some type of disability and go on SS early.

So why wait? I suspect the answer has to do with having a sense of accomplishment at the least, that you the individual did something, made your own way through the world. You weren't satisfied with merely being good enough or like everyone else.

Whether it's writing or some other type of professional pursuit what drives us to be better is not wanting to merely settle. The world is full of those people already and I suspect some may even write "for a living."

Which just makes more room at the top for those who are driven internally.
If you voluntarily quit, you are not eligible for benefits. Getting housing is a huge wait list and takes a lot of information and filling out a ton of paperwork. Same for food assistance. It's difficult to get into these programs. The assistance these programs provide is borderline subsistence or lower. Getting SS disability is also very tough, even if you obviously qualify. I imagine your off the cuff statements here are due to total ignorance of what these programs are and how they work, so... maybe before talking about them you should do some research?

Anyway, for the OP... if I had access to basic income, not much would change except I'd probably take more risks in what I write (branch out into comics a bit maybe) and live with less stress in the months where my health stuff means I can't do as much. So... possibly I'd create more.
 
#18 ·
Anarchist said:
However, unlike welfare benefits, which taper off and end, UBI "benefits" (as they're currently being proposed) are perpetual. Such a scheme would likely be funded with income taxes, similar to welfare.
Except there'd soon be no income to tax, because pretty much everyone would quit work.

At the $1500 or so a month that some politicos have suggested here in Canada, we'd sell one house, move in with my girlfriends' mother, and collect $5k a month for doing nothing so I could write and my girlfriend and her mother could take a cruise three times a year.
 
#20 ·
Someone needs to pay for a UBI... perhaps those who produce...such as writers...which means the government will take more of their royalty income as taxes for redistribution.  At a certain point, writing and selling books when the proceeds serve mainly to support others will turn into a losing proposition (and once the marginal tax rate hits 100%, it becomes slavery), meaning I'll likely forget about working my butt off crafting stories and coast on the UBI like everyone else.  Why bother working?  And then, inevitably the government runs out of other peoples' money...  Anyone visited sunny Caracas lately?
 
#21 ·
$1320 or $1500 a month would have very little effect on me. While I live a rather modest lifestyle, and I know some people live on amounts like that, I can't imagine doing it myself. I'd still need what I could bring in with my books. That UBI would just be there for extras.

I'll conform to KBoards no-politics rule and not say what I think of the idea in general.
 
#23 ·
Will Kurth said:
It seems to me that a UBI of sorts already exists making the question no longer hypothetical.

One could for example, at least in the USA just quit your job, go on unemployment. Or collect food stamps, live in Section 8 Housing, and get a welfare check every month.

Or one could convince the Social Security Administration that you have some type of disability and go on SS early.
This might make a plot for a fantasy, but as Annie said above, that's not the way it works, in spite of the book Ayn Rand wrote. It would be just as realistic for me to say I'll fly to California tomorrow and scoop enough gold out of the streams to carry me every month.

I'm assuming the people talking about a UBI are not in the U.S., since I've never heard such an idea proposed here. Basic economics says it won't work long term.

I plan to retire the end of this year and hopefully have more time to write. Having more time won't provide extra motivation, so we'll see how it goes.
 
#24 ·
ellenoc said:
I'll conform to KBoards no-politics rule and not say what I think of the idea in general.
Thanks, Ellen, and others who resisted the siren call of the Big P. But the topic here makes it just too tempting, I think. Locking, at least for the moment.
 
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