Why the world should adopt a basic income
economist.com
economist.com
Incidentally I talk about how someone can come in with nothing and end up with part ownership in The Machine in its follow on essay, The Corporation.
Public ownership of means of production is as easily overturned (doing so is called “privatization”) as wealth redistribution; in fact, it's been done many times in places that had established public ownership of some or all of the means of production. So, your objection to redistribution seems to apply at least as strongly to your alternative.
To be clear, I’m not talking about state ownership of the means of production, I’m talking about direct ownership through democratically controlled private corporations.
Property rights, no less than taxing and spending, is a feature of law subject to the whims of the State.
Thanks!
It's not an entirely unreasonable approach; it's been used with some notable success in, e.g., the Mondragón system.
OTOH, tax-and-redistribute is even more well-established an approach, being a feature of virtually all modern mixed economies.
> I’ll have to look in to the reform you speak of in Mexico. Do you have any more details to guide my search on that?
The ley Lerdo of 1856 (especially it's application to indigenous communities) and the Constitutional amendment to allow privatization of land held in ejidos that were formed as part of the land reforms of the Mexican Revolution under President Salinas in 1992 are the two notable Mexican examples.
More importantly, how does your solution of inventing a new machine to solve poverty help anyone in the decades before we're able to build it? What's the backup plan if you're wrong about the feasibility of this machine?
You seem to be trying to get rid of economics by solving scarcity rather than come up with solutions to economic problems.
The follow on essay to The Machine is The Corporation, which talks a little about the logistics of such a thing.
http://tlalexander.com/corporation/
Certainly, I’d like to write a book on these ideas, and I have a lot more to flesh out. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing!
Much of what I want to accomplish is not to get rid of economics, but make it work for regular people. I think that can be done by making sure the people own the means of production and making sure that no one is unfairly exploited for their labor. That is not in my mind getting rid of economics.
And surely, I believe we can realize the benefits of these ideas almost immediately, and I advocate for doing that on my website, http://Reboot.love. Specifically, I think that we can encourage robotics engineers to develop open source solutions, and we can encourage investors and policy makers to fund training so more people can understand how to benefit from these open source designs. I foresee real economic benefits to these ideas helping people within ten years. I believe the reach of these ideas can be broader and more immediate than a UBI. Even if a UBI were implemented in, say, France or Canada, billions would still be without it. But if we design open source productive machinery that can be made in a small shop, everyone from Kenya to Bangladesh to Detroit and Watsonville can benefit.
That’s what I’m working towards.
Also it’s kind of comical to insinuate that such shares issued by a government that just appropriated a huge chunk of private corporations would somehow be more secure than cash issued periodically because they are harder to take away, I mean they would litterally signify that this government will take whatever they wish without recourse.
basic income does not replace any of these safety nets. you will still have to have them. UBI is just increasing taxes
i’d rather add more safety nets to help those really in need than raise taxes to pay everyone some small amount
Mwuh ha ha! Then why levy taxes for anything?!
Although the existing system is so asinine that sometimes they are, which is just another reason to replace it.
Because people owning tanks and bombs want to be paid for not using them.
With guardianship that UBI could be directed to an organization to provide that budget management. They can issue a food stamp card, housing assistance, etc. That management could be a government agency or privatized. If privatized it would have to be regulated as a fidicuary.
None of these programs actually prevent that. If someone desperate for a job throws a dinner party to try to network and the guests eat weeks worth of their food, they starve before the next allocation whether the food was bought with food stamps or money. Anyone who wants to convert food stamps to dollars can find a little old lady, offer to do her grocery shopping and then buy the food with food stamps and pocket her cash. If the power fails and all your new food spoils, you're not "allowed" to resell your housing subsidy by subletting for a week to cover the replacement cost.
All the restrictions do is cause inefficiency. If someone wants to eat beans instead of steak or even just go hungry some days because they want to save the money for college or a down payment on a house, who are we to judge?
To me, it seems important to tread with humbleness here because UBI is not a product of modern science. We are not the first to consider it, and it’s never been considered quite an acceptable solution. Why is that?
The problem is, as often with economics, a problem with value and it’s ways of fluctuating across geography, networks, business and social structures in a matter of literally no time at all. Time is merely fuel to the fire.
Social programs are created by a government in the sense of a government that is of the people. Governments are not inherently just rulers of the land. They are ideally institutions built by people for the purpose of maintaining a state of civility and addressing common concern that might undermine that state of civility.
Social programs, or safety nets, serve a very specific purpose: to maintain a floor of minimum dignity (or less) considered acceptible in the sought civil state. If this is defined in terms of money, that level of dignity is then held victim to the precarity of value in a capitalist society; and that is not a floor I would be willing to touch with a ten foot pole; certainly no dignified person would expect another to either.
With commodities necessary to survive, it’s obvious how this can go wrong. We are talking about food and shelter here. Social housing is well-proven and extremely efficient. As it stands, masses of people in the US can’t afford housing at their current wage.
The best argument for UBI is as another economic stimulus, which is absolutely needed to prolong the final crash. The question seems to be who is included in the beneficiaries. So, like much of this type of thing, if we don’t agree to collectively give a shit about other people in the first place, it’s not worth wasting time over.
Um... what? The government quantifies exactly how much it will spend on social welfare programs each year. Simply dividing the budget out by the number of people enrolled (also available from the government) paints a very clear picture of how much 'civil dignity' is worth.
I agree but they are built by specific people - military. The state of civility is not a goal by itself just the best way for the military to get paid for doing nothing of value for the rest of the people, in predictable and stable fashion.
Keep in mind, that libertarians are fundamentally against governments telling people how to spend their money. This includes the rich and the poor. The rich should not be told how to spend their money and the poor ought to be given everything they need to survive and not be told how to spend it either. Thus everyone is treated equally in the eyes of the law.
No, obviously not. Removing all individual agency from welfare is simply dehumanizing. Let people make the best decisions for themselves... and get legitimate help (not food stamps) for the people unable to do that.
Dope dealers will not accept food as payment.
>make the best decisions for themselves.
And what about their children? Many of them are poor because they have kids. No one has the individual agency to get high on free money while their kids starve.
So then the question is is the overhead worth that marginal case?
It makes way more sense to have your constituents be financially educated than to "accept that they are dumb" and then just attempt to fix everything they mess up. The latter is unsustainable. UBI + better schooling should preclude the need for food programs, etc.
UBI should preclude the need for food programs and it also won’t in practice. What’s changed?
Why do you care that jobs don’t work for everyone, but don’t care that UBI won’t work for everyone?
If you’re a ‘people should just be smarter’ person why do you want to help people using UBI in the first place?
Because jobs and UBI aren't the same thing. You aren't guaranteed a job out of high school or college, so you are more likely to have some sort of basis for your claim that you need support from everyone else. On the other hand, with UBI, if you're given exactly what you need to sustain your life and can't, then it's clearly a personal problem.
Right - so we still need a food program for people who have personal problems that cause them to run out of money - like being innumerate, or having mental health issues, or a controlling abusive partner, or just being super crap with money no matter how hard they honestly try.
You can say we’ll leave those people to starve to death, but that’s not going to get me to vote for UBI!
You’ll probably more realistically say ‘ok well we’ll help that one mother just one time with the baby starving to death because she is addicted to gambling away her UBI’ but then bingo you’re now running a food program as well.
We don't have one now; it might be nice to have with UBI as it would be now, but why would it be any more necessary with UBI?
Sure, if UBI is a more efficient means of solving the problems addressed by means-tested programs and unlocks economic potential forgone due to minimum wage, it might make the existing need for such a program something that we can afford to address, but it certainly doesn't create an unmet need that doesn't already exist.
> You can say we’ll leave those people to starve to death, but that’s not going to get me to vote for UBI!
But, that's exactly the status quo for people with too much income to qualify for food aid who don't spend it well. Why would losing that existing situation unchanged whole improving other areas be a reason to oppose UBI?
Plenty of private charities can exist which you can donate to if you believe your money should be helping those people. A system where some people voluntarily donate has less inequity than a system where all people are forced to donate.
If someone fuck up and use up all their UBI then they must seek private entity such as church or charity.
But if this is your attitude - people who mess up should be on their own - why are you in favour of UBI? Why don’t you also think that people who can’t get a job should be on their own?
Personally, I recognize that you need some level of money in order to take part in civic society. For example, it's hard to find a job without a mailing address, nice clothes, cosmetic products, and make up. It's also hard to put your time towards finding a job if you can't eat. Thus, in the interest of maximizing economic output and social engagement, we ought to provide enough money for people to be able to afford these things.
If you are able to afford these things, but still mess up... well, I mean, you have freely and without coercion chosen to disengage with society. To these people, I hope they are happy with their choice, but I struggle to see how they could be.
I prefer UBI because I can't choose however I want to spend it.
Just as a note, I'm not really a libertarian sympathizer anymore, but that is my understanding of the libertarian justification for UBI.
in that world you get to eat only if you are financially responsible. in the current world everyone gets to eat (or we try to feed the hungry)
i think the current model is way more humane. and we will never cancel social programs to have a less humane society
Libertarians want to cancel social programs and replace with UBI so individuals determine how to spend their benefits. Socialists want to guarantee everyone a living wage but also want the safety nets.
Policy needs to be in middle. You need to enable people to self-manage. Must be ready to help them when there is a bad turn events. But you also need to have a humane way to deal with people that are incapable of taking care of themselves, for example mental illness. The way to handle that is guardianship, not other government programs that can also be individually mismanaged. Guardianship will surely be more expensive then UBI but it is the humane thing to do.
On this point, I agree 100%, but UBI programs are not really focused on the mentally ill. As is, disability is a fraction of what we traditionally think of as welfare (and it's already neglected in our current society). Most welfare are food stamps, health services, etc, for people that would otherwise be perfectly capable on their own.
A UBI does not mean getting rid of programs for people that cannot actually help themselves like the severely disabled or foster children. It means not treating grown adults like children or wards of the state
So I totally agree that the Libertarian perspective is not to TELL (force) ME to spend my money on UBI
Anarchists believe there ought to be no government at all.
If you can't see the difference still, I would recommend picking up a book. Hacker news is not the place to learn about various political philosophies.
Yes, it does, in the same way that any other income already does, which is why those all tend to be means-tested programs.
> you will still have to have them.
No, you won't, once the UBI level is above the income level at which the programs would not be available.
A basic income can eliminate many wasteful bureaucratic policies, leaving more money to spend on what folks want.
Of course the real question is whether doing this would allow you to actually simplify anything, or if it's possible to simplify taxes with only minor (or desired) changes in net income.
No, you would repeal all existing social and welfare programs, the minimum wage and employer healthcare, and replace them with a bare minimal UBI.
At least in the US, there is no other implementation that would be palatable to conservatives, business and most voters.
How about the homeless in (any super expensive city that still won’t be able to afford housing there, yet for whatever reason won’t leave?
No, we’ll STILL need safety nets even with UBI.
But it lessens the burden on all of them.
UBI is a convenient way for the wealthy classes to wash their hands of the poor without having to give up too much of their wealth. Not to mention it will probably be provided by a government donor corporation in the form of a cashless card with moralistic restrictions on how the income can be spent (e.g. no alcohol or legal cannabis).
Both of course, people tend to want it all, and dreams to pay for it all. In 100 years it'll supposedly all work out fine, despite "short term" problems, no need to compromise.
I'm sorry you have to withstand the opposition from those who have to weather the problems in the meantime. Perhaps a loaner crystal ball could help us weave our reservations.
Very few people actually want totally unrestricted immigration, and most of them -- the only consistent ones -- are either unitary world government proponents or full on anarchists. Otherwise you're inviting seven billion people to vote in your country's elections, and then nothing stops them from voting for the same sort of wealth redistribution policies or anything else to the detriment of the existing population. It's not pick one: open borders or redistribution of wealth, it's pick one: open borders or democracy.
The ideological inconsistency you're observing is realpolitik in action. People who want more socialist policies don't want unrestricted immigration, they only want just enough immigration from socialist-leaning countries that they have the majorities needed to pass their policies. Meanwhile people on the right are trying to keep the same people out for the same reason -- Republicans don't oppose immigration because they're "racist", it's because those immigrants disproportionately vote for Democrats. Neither party will be consistent because consistency loses them votes.
As an alternative to means-tested benefit programs (especially those that beyond means-testing are expressly conditioned on having dependent children) it does not, in fact, it reduces that incentive.
> Like throwing nutrients limitlessly into a petri dish.
It's not like that at all.
Do you think UBI would encourage people to have more children?
Why do you think money is finite?
It's just a way of tracking of what fraction of humanity output each person is entitled to.
I have alimony in about the amount that is frequently cited as how much America should give people for basic income. Without additional income on top of that, I can't pay rent and keep myself fed. I was willing to move almost anywhere in the US to find a low rent place to get myself off the street. Most people can't or won't do that. Most places in the US do not have rentals cheap enough for someone to live on $10k or so a year.
In other words, if you don't address the lack of affordable housing, basic income won't support most people. And if you do, you go a long ways towards not needing basic income. The lack of affordable housing is an issue that needs to be tackled regardless. Talking about basic income strikes me as taking time away from problems that must be addressed regardless.
I see basic income as a lazy answer posited by people who would like to imagine you can throw money at the problem because they can't figure out how to effectively address some of the issues here. I don't think that actually works. I think that would actually go some pretty bad places.
Here's what will happen:
- taxes raised for "insert acronym of flavor here" (UBI)
- 95% allocated to every citizen, permanent resident, legal immigrant, illegal migrant, etc.
- Over time they will decrease the allocation relative to the amount they collect.
Next thing you know, "UBI" is just another line item on your paycheck deductions just like "EI" and "CPP" is a deduction in Canada for "Employment Insurance" and "Canada Pension Plan".
Neither of which will actually solve the problem because that was not the (hidden) goal to begin with.
There will be just as much, if not more poverty because:
- smart, hardworking people will leave the country because they are tired of getting abused with excessive taxes.... draining productivity
- poorest people will take on brutal loans for things they do not need (lottery, drugs, cars, shiny clothes)
- poorest people will become lethargic. "Free" unearned income is poison to ambition and creativity.
- "Free" income is not Free because it is given based on an inflating money supply. It means your children or grandchildren will be paying it via hidden tax of inflation and effectively sold into debt slavery.
We are watching the final stages take place where the communist revolution will be complete. As it stands, the USA is heavily socialist and stopped being capitalistic once they seized control of the economy in 1913 and began central planning via fiat money printing and manipulating interest rates.
Plan accordingly over the next 5-20 years
As far as the issue of "encouraging laziness", anyone who has read the Bhagavad Gita is familiar with the idea that alongside the tendency towards rest is an equal tendency towards movement and action.
Wouldn't hurt if we also got a bit of actual cash on top of that though.
A negative income tax is the exact same idea with slightly different framing.
Someone supporting a kid gets a much larger max benefit than someone earning the max benefit with no children ($3,400 vs $510) and the benefit tapers away for low incomes.
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!"
Even then the prices of various products will likely be affected, but the nature and extent of those effects are not obvious.
They're also likely to be beneficial, because the existing programs that would be replaced are the ones causing exactly the sort of price inflation we don't want by inflating the prices of necessities like food, housing and medicine.
When the government is paying for your healthcare, you get all the unnecessary tests. When the government is giving you the cash equivalent and whatever you don't spend on medicine you get to keep, you only get the necessary tests and then have money left over to take a vacation. So the price of healthcare goes down and the price of cruise tickets goes up, which seems like a pretty good trade off.
Where does this happen?
What do you mean? The entire US healthcare system operates this way. Either the government is your insurance (medicare, medicaid and similar state programs, federal employees etc.), or they subsidize private insurance through tax incentives and direct subsidies for low income people that encourage/require comprehensive insurance rather than catastrophic coverage.
Then none of those people have the incentive to compare prices or decline unnecessary procedures because the insurance is paying for most or all of it.
This way same amount of money would get injected into the economy. Just not into the pockets of borrowers, but directly into consumers.
> Universal basic income is an old libertarian idea. It's greatest advocate is probably Milton Friedman. It's seen as more equitable than welfare programs, which libertarians view as too highly regulated and thus an infringement on individual freedom. That's the libertarian argument against welfare. You add that to the libertarian argument for welfare (that people can't be truly free if they're having to pay for things like health emergencies, etc) and you invariably conclude that the way to maximize individual freedoms is to provide a universal basic income, if you're going to have any kind of welfare program
Also, the comment quoted above was made by me... the same guy you responded to, ha! :)
Of course the corollary is that all other welfare programs are immediately ended, but this is not typically included in these modern implementations.
[1] http://reason.com/archives/2017/06/03/the-indestructible-ide...
More libertarian resources:
[2] https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basi...
[3] https://basicincome.org/news/2016/08/us-johnson-supports-bas...
[4] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragm...
But if I can attempt an answer. I believe it is libertarian in the sense that it does not require a large bureaucracy with onerous rules and regulations controlling the funds distribution and use.
The money is available to everyone for any use. The government may just serve as a pass-through entity.
Money and power accrete more money and power. Government must serve as a redistributive force, to some degree, unless we're all-in on exploitation.
> If everyone is entitled to a basic income as a matter of right, that means others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor.
...is not an approrpiate response. Just because the government is funded through income at present doesn't mean its the only way to fund government. You could fund the government (and UBI) with a land-value-tax, for example.
I take it that you have a universal definition of 'inalienable rights'.
Here's another - the whole world (all the land in the world) was claimed by people just because they were born before me (and had guns). Those people who were born before then arbitrarily hand that land/resources to other people, with really no objective justification outside of tradition.
Of course, we treat these traditions are nonsense when it's convenient -- if we really believed them then we'd give back most of the land in America to native Americans.
Isn't it just arbitrary that you're excluding others from enjoying these things? What right do you have to have exclusive use of anything?
This is exactly taxation of all kinds. And your framing presupposes that these fruits that would be obtainable without the social structure that those payments support.
Not to mention that, 'fruits of their labor' is a highly tendentious way of talking about a capitalist system. The fruits of their capital, perhaps. By and large, capital owners already extract a very large proportion of the 'fruits' of their employees labor.
I think it is a very dubious argument whether basic income would all balance out, but it is no different in kind from any other social collectivism.