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Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

Don't most of the advocates of Universal Basic Income agree with the premise of "cannibilizing other important programs"? I tend to associate UBI with "what you get if you challenge a Libertarian to provide welfare", as it is a single primitive that for some level of squinting replaces large numbers of more specific programs.

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I think there is a basic Left/Right divide on this question where the Right is closer to "liquidate all social security programs and distribute the proceeds" and the Left is closer to "new handouts in additional to all existing programs, with price controls to prevent inflation."

I'm running out of things that the progressives want the government to pay for without any logic and mathematics behind it:

1.) College 2.) Healthcare 3.) Abortion 4.) UBI

Why not just throw the entire enchilada out there and just have them pay for everything? If giving people money allows for economic growth, then wouldn't it make sense to just give everyone unlimited amount of money. Why stop at X when you can go for Y.

1,2& 3 is already free is most countries and even in developing countries like India. Why are Americans so averse to universal health coverage?

They aren't against it, they are against the incompetent government that will oversee it.

You've just moved the goalposts. Your original comment said:

> I'm running out of things that the progressives want the government to pay for without any logic and mathematics behind it

The logic behind the first three as presented is "most countries already do this," along with the implication (justified, in my opinion) that it works out well for their citizens.

So why wouldn't it be the same in the USA? Is our government uniquely incapable of this? Is it that the model of these other countries is unsustainable? Is it that we have a huge propaganda machine in place that is convincing many of our citizens to conclude without serious and informed consideration that it shouldn't be the role of our government to provide these things? Or is it some other option?

There is absolutely no such thing as competent government. Even here in Australia the medicare is an absolutely marvelous thing although I cannot say that about the current government. The policy should be sound, not the people who created the policy.

How do the first three have no "logic or mathematics behind it"?

Developing nations can afford to create such programs, and run them successfully without harming themselves.

Surely the US is mathematically, and logically, capable of providing such services?

Yes, that is one of the arguments put forth against UBI in the Intelligence Squared Debate on UBI [1].

Basically, the argument is that you'll never raise taxes in the USA, so if you want to help the poor, you have to target the poor, not give half that money to rich people. If you're unable to raise taxes, which you very likely won't be able to, then you just end up taking money away from the poor.

If you can raise taxes, you can rebalance the money given to the rich with a progressive tax making it essentially a Negative Income Tax AKA Mincome [2], but again it whether you'd be able to do it or not is a different question.

[1] https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basi...

[2] http://i.imgur.com/JbnFDo5.gifv

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