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Comment by commandar | Hacker News Reader

>and the ability to drastically simplify government welfare--cutting out a ton of means-tested programs and their agencies, and replacing it all with a check each month.

As someone that leans left, this is one of the big arguments I make in favor of UBI.

Frankly, I'm tired of arguing over the minutia of welfare, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage, social security, etc.

Fine. Scrap most of our social assistance programs outside of healthcare and replace them with a UBI.

The progressive in me likes it because it gives everyone a minimum safety net and the capitalist in me likes it because it opens up entrepreneurism and the ability to pursue potentially innovative businesses -- especially in an economy increasingly geared toward service and information work -- to huge portions of the population that are otherwise locked out. Active, small businesses are good for everyone.

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Another overlooked right-leaning perk of UBI: depending on the details, it could allow reducing or even eliminating the minimum wage. This means that labor would be free to seek its true market value, resulting in more total jobs, and reduced incentive/necessity to ship jobs overseas.

Yup, exactly why I included the minimum wage in the list of things that could be scrapped in favor of UBI.

Whoops, overlooked that in your post! But I think it bears repeating. :)

You don't need a minimum wage when you have an UBI worth its name (not just around / below the current minimum wage e.g. like discussed in Switzerland £1,500 a month or more).

People will either do the job or you have to pay a reasonable amount for it - one key principle of the UBI - more people get a choice how they use / sell their time and are not prey like today in many regions / countries to the few who dictate how much they will receive for their time.

Not sure any of us will see it, but I foresee a day when "employee" will be all but extinct. The reason? I think technology, taken to its logical extreme, will empower individuals to the point they'll be able to run fortune 500 scale businesses out of their garages (with all the automation-as-a-service that I imagine will exist). And board rooms? Who needs 'em when you've got the full power of sentient AI to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish.

I like the idea of a Universal Basic Income but running the numbers is eye opening:

£1,500 ~= $2,274

$2,274/person/mo * 12 mo/yr * 300,000,000 people = $8,186,400,000,000/yr. $8 trillion a year to provide that level of UBI to all 300,000,000ish Americans.

Not an inconsequential amount of money!

But if you combine that with a progressive tax rate wont the government take large swathes of that back in the form of taxes?

How much would that be? 40%? That still close to $5 trillion.

How will willingly pay $5 trillion of taxes after all the hard work only to watch everybody else living of their work for free?

Subtract 2 - 3 trillion worth of welfare, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage, social security, etc and it suddenly starts looking feasible. Expensive, yes, but feasible.

Please help me understand this. You promise to pay someone $x, but you will only pay $x-90%(say $y)

The person receiving $y is actually getting it from the very taxes they pay. So essentially what you are giving them is a tax discount. Except in cases where a person makes $0, for which you have social security anyway.

So this is basically a tax discount? You could simply say based on their income some a% of tax discount will be offered every year.

The GDP is something like $14 trillion. We're talking about 60% of the GDP being redistributed. That will work really well... especially when the GDP drops by about a third, which will surely happen.

"We're talking about 60% of the GDP being redistributed."

When assessing the amount being redistributed, much of what's paid in UBI should be netted against what's collected to pay the UBI.

That is, if I am receiving $27k/yr in UBI, but paying $30k/yr in increased taxes toward the UBI, really only $3k/yr is being "redistributed" from me.

This is still going to be a substantial sum, but quite a bit less than "people * UBI amount".

Please don't take this as my asserting that I think $27k/yr would be sustainable in the US - for the record, I don't.

And another right-wing perk: if the basic income had a minimum age, it would attenuate the dysgenic incentives of modern welfare systems.

The problem is, when you scrap all of those programs you immediately create more unemployment. There are a lot of jobs supporting social services, the hard part is going to be finding a way to phase in UBI without wrecking the economy.

Removing jobs is viewed as an upside of a policy like that, not a downside (by economists only, pretty much, but they're right about it).

I suspect one of the side effects is that UBI would lead to a decrease in full time employment and an increase in part time employment. Basically, having a job would become a matter of making enough to live the lifestyle of your choice rather than a matter of having a roof over your head and the ability to eat.

It's one of the reasons I mentioned scrapping the minimum wage when implementing UBI.

The job market becomes much more of a market where work is paid for what it's worth because it's an actual market and employers don't have the undue leverage of simple survival over employees.

Just for once, I want to hear a truly honest conservative politician: "We need to drastically shrink the government, which is why when I'm elected, one-eighth* of my constituency will be immediately unemployed!"

(Not that there isn't a good case for eliminating federal waste; but the reality I never hear uttered in the conservative bubble is that the largest government expense is federal employees and subcontractors.)

By that measure, the "truly honest" progressive politician would say: "we need to drastically raise social program spending and taxes, which will dramatically increase unemployment!"

(Not that there isn't a good case for improving federal social programs; but the reality I never hear uttered in the progressive bubble is that the largest government expenses are social programs like social security, medicare, and medicaid.)

I don't understand your rebuttal, how does increased spending on social programs lead to higher unemployment? Are you suggesting that increased social spending leads to people tactically becoming unemployed in order to gain benefits while not working?

Romer and Romer showed that higher taxes lead to lower growth and vice-versa; the additional taxes required to finance the social program spending will sooner or later lead to reduced opportunities for employment.[1] Others have shown that a larger "social safety net" leads to higher unemployment for a variety of reasons.[2][3] It is also logical that people's aversion to unemployment is proportional to its cost (to them), and that if it is less costly, they will expend less time and effort in the stressful, taxing, and unpleasant task of looking for work.

[1] http://eml.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/RomerandRomerAERJune2...

[2] http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr646.pdf

[3] http://time.com/9009/unemployment-is-worse-than-death/ (the point is made more thoroughly in the author's book)

Yes, a lot of people employed to make unemployed people feel guilty. (And make them jump through hoops.) Inefficient and mean-spirited bureaucratic overhead.

That won't be the hard part about phasing in UBI without wrecking the economy. All those people that are now unemployed are now earning the UBI.

Except it won't necessarily match their previous salaries. There are a lot of high 5 digit and low six digit incomes in the social services job hierarchy.

> There are a lot of jobs supporting social services, the hard part is going to be finding a way to phase in UBI without wrecking the economy.

You phase it in by starting it at a low level without replacing/reducing existing programs, and then as you ramp it up you start eliminating other programs.

I agree. Markets and businesses are changing so fast that most people are going to have periods of tough career change in their lives.

Allowing people to make those important transitions without completely losing financial stability will help everyone.

I highly doubt scrapping all social assistance is politically possible. Sure, basic income would be better than a patch work welfare state present in most of the developed world, but I am skeptical that it will be any different from other transfer programs already in place.

>Sure, basic income would be better than a patch work welfare state present in most of the developed world

In many countries the government negotiates medicine prices as one entity for the entire country. This gives it a lot of leverage and the ability to provide medicine for all its citizens at a price far lower than what they would each individually be able to buy it at.

Now if everybody had basic income the governments might start getting pressured to stop acting as an intermediate negotiator.

The idealist in me loves it. The political realist in me just doesn't see it.

Government programs have huge constituencies and embedded supporters within and without government who will fight tooth and nail to keep them. There is no way you will actually cut down on them as suggested.

The best part is, the minimum income applies to them, too!

While they're figuring out what to do next with their lives, they won't be left in the lurch, they'll get that sweet, sweet (well, minimal) UBI check just like everyone else.

Not with that attitude you won't!

That is one of the best summaries of why this appeals to both the left and the right. Well said!

Also, less bureaucracy to languish and become inneficient, entrenched, and corrupt.

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