Comment by ue_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ue_ | Hacker News Reader

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> 1. No true Scotsman

Have you heard of the "fallacy fallacy"? The idea that calling out a fallacy merely invalidates the whole argument. Please explain how I have made the fallacy.

>to support the vast majority of society leeching off UBI

I'm not a proponent of UBI.

>At $1000 per month per American you're looking at well over $3,000,000,000,000 per year.

Although I'm not proposing that everyone be given $1000/mo (I'm arguing for Socialism, not charity!) the reason why you say it is so infeasible is firstly because (i) you regard $1000 as "basic income" (ii) you don't think this amount is already paid to the working class as a whole.

If the companies can collectively afford to pay people wages, then it would follow that an economy in which the companies have been replaced by a central organ would also be able to pay the same wages. $1000 is well below the median wage in the US (around $3100) which leads me to believe that Americans (by this I mean American workers) are are already collectively paid more than $3,000,000,000,000 per year. So why exactly is this number infeasible? It's already being paid, just by many entities instead of one.

> So why exactly is this number infeasible? It's already being paid, just by many entities instead of one.

The problem with your logic is that you would need an extra $3,000,000,000,000 ON TOP of the value currently paid out to the workforce (someone needs to create all that value), unless again you'd like to rob the workforce of their labor to redistribute those not providing labor?

>The problem with your logic is that you would need an extra $3,000,000,000,000 ON TOP of the value currently paid out to the workforce

Why? Those already making sufficient (i.e more) than the basic income wouldn't receive extra money. A proportional tax could be used to fund those who do not make the basic income to supplement them until the required amount is reached. For example if the basic income is $2000 and someone only makes $1500, then they would be given $500 each month, not $2000 as you seem to be implying. Those making $0 would be given $2000 each month. Massive taxes on unused land, extremely high "earners" and imports can help toward the goal of accumulating sufficient amounts. Laws regulating the rate of exploitation could also be introduced to lower the amount which each worker must be supplemented by if at all, capturing most but not all of the extra revenue made by the introduction of labour saving devices (also serving to reduce the rate of exploitation or stop its growth).

That's not how basic income is proposed. Basic income means everybody gets the same amount, regardless of what they are earning. At least that is the proposed solution and is the accepted definition. It is universal and unconditional. If you make a million dollars a year, you still get the same basic income check as the guy who is earning zero dollars per year. (Obviously, the guy making a million dollars per year would be heavily taxed.)

Citation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

If workers get the same amount of money within the $0->$2000 bracket, what benefit do the employers get in paying them more? This introduces an easy corruption scheme where employers provide minor work benefits to employees who are willing to take a "pay hit" and supplement their income through UBI instead.

Why would these jobs even exist, anyway? The employees don't get a benefit from doing them(unless they enjoy the work, but then it's essentially a hobby, because your income does not depend on it). This should drive wages for jobs under the UBI limit up, e.g. why would a janitor agree to be paid $1000 if he can just do nothing and collect the same amount of money?

Since the work for these jobs needs to be done, businesses will need to provide some kind of monetary incentive for people to do them - e.g. you would have to pay people $3000 instead of $1000 to realistically entice them to work. The number might even be higher, because of diminishing returns in compensation(e.g. the first $1000 per month you get buys you food and housing, so you value it highly; once you cover the basic costs of living you start getting into luxuries, which people might value less).

What about previous jobs which netted $3000, but required qualifications on top of the ones you get for $1000? Why would people pursue these qualifications when they can now do the former $1k job for the same compensation? Would this not mean that you would need to increase wages for those people as well, in order to keep them working? This might have a lesser effect across career paths, but certainly within a single career path the upward pressure of the under-UBI jobs will force the over-UBI jobs to shift up as well - e.g. if you paid your "store worker" $1000 and your "store manager" $3000, the "store manager"'s salary now needs to go up, otherwise why would they take up the extra responsibility?

I'm not sure what the effect of this upward pressure on wages will be, but certainly some of it will be eaten up by rising prices - i.e. the supply of goods hasn't gone up but the demand would, with more available wealth in the population.

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