What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?
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The way I see it, the main problem that UBI is solving is inequality, it's a rich to poor transfer. Excessive inequality is bad because the aggregate utility goes down (rich people don't gain much from an additional dollar, so it's more effectively used by a poor person).
Transfering cash directly is the most efficient way of decreasing inequality, so UBI is the right approach. At this time, the amount of UBI should be below what allows a comfortable life, because it would lead to a feedback loop in which people would be increasingly demotivated to work.
And what about robots? There is a danger that automation will further exacerbate income inequality, so redistribution is a natural response, because it would increase the effective wages of low income jobs. It seems unlikely that robots will literally take our jobs, you can probably always be someone's slave (not literally) for $5 / hour.
Perhaps they’d produce art, or seek out experiences and education that wouldn’t otherwise be afforded to them. Maybe they’d take on risk and start that business they’d always dreamed of if they weren’t taking of their parent with dementia or having to work fewer days to watch their newborn.
Maybe risking their and their children’s health and educations because they might not be compelled to tirelessly feed their lives into a labor machine like they were once is too simple and dehumanizing a way to think.
I’m not for UBI yet because society is still too unbalanced in favor of rent seekers, but I could see it being the next target on the agenda within the decade, assuming a Sanders presidency.
Income inequality is a problem of massively unequal political and economic power, and of insider knowledge and class-cultural arbitrage - not a problem of income.
If - hypothetically - all the jobs required to provide food, shelter, and other basics were taken over by robots, there would be no reason at all not to provide them for free, and give everyone the political and economic freedom to do whatever they wanted.
It's a fair bet that while most people would do nothing much of interest - including most of those who are currently rent seekers - there would still be enough competitive drive to inspire a decent chunk of the population to excel in art, music, science, math, and other productive activities.
That would be real freedom as a birthright - not as the freedom from economic slavery that can only be earned by contributing to that slavery, as now, but as a true inalienable right.
I've heard this concern before, but what's the assumption that is being made? That UBI will drive more people to cities and increase demand? That landlords would simply increase rent knowing renters have a larger income? That people's long term expectations of inflation changes?
The notion being put forward here is that the more money Joe Sixpack has, the more things will crop up to extract some.
This one seems a serious problem. Home sales too, since sellers know people could make larger mortgage payments.
Is there a good argument for why this will not inevitably transfer much of the money to landowners?
I regularly rent out the guest bedroom in my house. When I do so, I do not run complex formulas to figure out what a particular tenant might be able to afford. I simply look at rents for similar units in the area, and bump it up or down slightly based on the various features and amenities the room has. I don't charge a corporate executive higher rent than I charge a college student. Their ability to pay is not relevant.
You might be thinking "okay, but what if everyone's income went up in an UBI scenario?" Honestly, unless literally all the landlords in a city came together and colluded, you wouldn't see much increase, because we would have the same level of competition we have today.
The market is all the collusion necessary.
? Do you think these rents are set by God or something? The fact that it's a dynamic system doesn't change the fact that the equilibrium (and thus prices) are set through supply and demand.
People receive UBI, more people are able to move out and buy/rent an apartment or house, landlords are getting more applicants and apartment buildings start filling up, some landlords increase price to compensate for increased demand, average rent for an area goes up, the rest of the landlords increase their prices to match the market
> I simply look at rents for similar units in the area
Iterate that and the rents rise until they reach a new, higher global equilibrium.
Which is why I'd prefer to see UBH (Universal Basic Housing).
Only if there is insufficient competition to keep prices down and the market is already broken, which is the case in some areas but not most. In the more notable cases like housing UBI still helps by freeing people to live anywhere instead of cities with plentiful jobs, and even that is largely an artificial problem in developed countries with birth rates below replacement levels.
Honestly, I find this idea laughable. If the last 10 years have taught me anything, it's that people will spend every spare minute they have staring at their phones or streaming TV.
I think if the culture was ingrained to gain a source of prestige based off of what they contribute for free, that would incentivize people to pursue those Nobel endeavors. But that sort of culture shift would take Star trek levels of time to get to.
Denmark has kind of an UBI: a single mom + one kid, no work for past 20 years, gets more than $2300 per month. Such a person has enough money for food, good apartment, etc. All what UBI wants to provide.
But many of these people end up depressed, inactive, feels like a failure, etc. Many just give completely up.
They don't feel "UBI" is like having a long vacation and a meaningful life.
budget: (notice that the mom can afford a $1000/month apartment) https://ekstrabladet.dk/nyheder/politik/danskpolitik/article...
> But many of these people end up depressed, inactive, feels like a failure, etc. Many just give completely up.
How would these people feel without the money, though? Presumably this group is at high risk for depression to begin with, and alleviating their material deprivation may well be doing a lot of good, even if their average life satisfaction is still not great. (This doesn't mean there's no better way, but I would be really wary of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here.)
I would love UBI, because it would transform what I could do with my time. Instead of working 9–5 on software for a company, I could build whatever I want. There are tons of app ideas floating around in my head that I just don’t have time to build. And I could release them for free or cheap, because my survival wouldn’t depend on them being profitable.
With UBI, I would expect to see many more people building open–source software. I would expect many more going into the arts. I would expect many more doing volunteer work. There are so many fulfilling and valuable things to do that are not easily profitable!
Hell, yes. There are a vast number of low-education people with what the HN crowd would call "old fashioned attitudes". From https://archive.is/CCTXs#selection-1205.100-1205.363:
"'Being a man means supporting your family,' says Mr Davis. 'You’ve got to do whatever it takes so they eat, [or] you’re no man at all.' Being a man, says Mr Redden, means you 'work hard, provide for your kids, have a car and [maybe] get your own house some day.'"
What would UBI do for them? It isn't going to fulfill their emotional or spiritual needs. (What they really need is a universal jobs program, IMO.)
> "With UBI, I would expect to see many more people building open–source software. I would expect many more going into the arts. I would expect many more doing volunteer work. There are so many fulfilling and valuable things to do that are not easily profitable!"
Funny, then why aren't people on public assistance already doing all these things you imagine? As others have noted, EU nations provide benefits better than any UBI proposal likely to succeed in the US. So where is this magical wave of creativity?
Could it be (shock, horror) that the vast majority of people don't have the creativity to build things or make art and don't feel they would be fulfilled by volunteer work?
In the current system, if you want to do X, you have to prove to the people who are willing to pay you a living wage/market rate to do X that you are worth hiring to do it.
Under a (hypothetical) post-scarcity system, if you want to do X, you find a group that's working on X and say you want to spend some of your time working on it, and you do it, possibly getting trained first if you don't yet have all the skills needed. Depending on the particular work and/or the particular system that's been implemented, either your financial needs are entirely taken care of by the UBI, or you get the UBI and then you may get paid some extra to do X—but the amount you would be paid to do it would be determined by completely different factors than under today's system.
This more-or-less eliminates the gap between what people want to do with their time and what society will let them do with it...though it will still require a cultural shift away from the idea of the Rugged Individualist Man Providing For His Otherwise Helpless Woman And Children With Nothing But The Sweat Of His Brow.
What if men providing resources to their families is a drive that runs deeper than some kind of vestigial macho chauvinism? We already have mass depression, isolation, falling educational outcomes, suicide, and even radicalization of men who are unable to find purpose to attach themselves to in the modern economy.
Are we to gloss over the function and instincts of half the population as an attitude problem? Social engineering is way too easy inside a theoretical bubble, where expecting billions of people to fundamentally reconstruct their entire identities can be handwaved in two words. Progressivism is supposed to meet people’s social needs, not dictate them.
If it is true—and I do not for a second believe it is—that the latter is an actual biological drive in men specifically, then that's something we need to work on developing strategies to mitigate and work through in a healthy way, because it's not helpful in our modern society. Y'know, much like our panic response is not helpful in our modern society, and when someone has an overdeveloped one, we treat it as a mental illness to be treated, not a "function and instinct" that needs to be catered to.
Personally, I find the idea that men have a biological imperative to be the sole reason their families survive to be nothing more than a ludicrous extension of modern toxic masculinity, on par with "of course men will rape women, once they get aroused they can't help themselves, they have a biological imperative to propagate their genes."
Back to the claim, sexual dimorphism and sexual division of labor are such a fundamental and ubiquitous element of human physiology and society that it is a mistake to assume there is no adaptation to speak of, or that the role of the male provider is suddenly maladaptive.
It may be that we can restructure society by common agreement in a different way that continues to harness the productivity of testosterone. That is not what you are espousing. Your ideas are a form of social high modernism which assumes the sexes are interchangeable as a premise, then categorizes any deviation as toxic and unhealthy (or even on par with rape apology, which is just... you've got to be kidding).
I don't see any basis to believe this other than that it simplifies the theory and makes utopia seem within reach. But we do have evidence to believe that sexual division of labor is effective (in a word, "civilization") and we are also seeing festering male issues in the decades since we've been experimenting with the alternative premise.
Highly educated people like lawyers also suffer from self-doubt and stress, e.g. thinking "there must be something wrong with me since nobody wants to hire me".
The "lawyers union" in Denmark asked 127 unemployed lawyers who recently graduated. 65% percent responded that unemployement "to a large degree" negatively affect their everyday lives. Only 3% responded that they are not affected at all. (in Danish) https://www.djoefbladet.dk/artikler/2013/8/ledighed-kan-kn-a...
So even people who are highly educated and for whom it should be easy to do a lot of fulfilling activity, still wants a job. They talk about the emotional burden, they don't talk about wanting more money.
EDIT: Also, at least here the unemployment benefits are predicated on actively seeking a job. If you actually go and admit you don't want a job, that can backfire in a situation that sucks to start with.
I was unemployed for nearly 2 years and it was a fucking nightmare. Because I had no idea what would happen to my life next week or next month. It's an unsustainable and extremely hostile situation. Can't make any long term plans, can't start any project that requires investment. The only way out of that situation is to get a job, which is everything you need to focus on, in place of all those interesting and fulfilling free-time activities one could think of doing during a period of true freedom and financial independence.
A steady, guaranteed, stable source of income would've changed it completely. You wouldn't need to deal with the stress of trying to find a way out of a terrible situation.
I don't think most pensioners, for instance, think that they've got into a fucking nightmare of a situation. Sure, some get depressed because suddenly their days aren't filled with the activity and people they're used to. But I think most pensioners are quite content as long as they are healthy, have enough money for comfort, have friends, and are free to find activities for themselves. And yes, some even get something that resembles a job. Maybe volunteer somewhere. It's still a rather different situation compared to being employed, and usually volunteers have only as much responsibility as they volunteer for, and they can pretty much quit or reduce their load any time. Around here, becoming a pensioner is something that is mostly celebrated. You can rest in ease knowing that you've earned your future and no longer need to compete in the rat race.
I can say that I enjoyed the heck out of long summer vacations and time between studies when I had zero pressure to worry about getting a job. I would FIRE if I could. There are so many things I want to do with my life, and 9-5 only gets in the way.
If you’re on a sickness benefit you’re supposed to be too sick to work. If you’re on an unemployment benefit you’re supposed to be finding a job. If you spend most of your time doing volunteer work you’ll probably lose your benefit.
Because public assistance in the US sucks. It's designed to. It is political tool more than social policy. There's a word of difference between these two things:
1. We as a society value families and children, so stay home and take care of yours, and we'll make sure you have enough resources to meet your needs. 2. Better get a job soon, parasite, your benefits expire next month.
In which of those situations do you feel safe, or free to create? Or to nurture, itself the greatest act of creativity? Is it not enough labor for society to raise a family? Must every mother also constantly be generating profits for someone else?
This is not my direct experience -- I consider myself fortunate -- but I've seen plenty of it. Getting public assistance is humiliating, time-consuming, and uncertain.
Humiliating - asking for public assistance immediately labels you as a problem and a failure, even for many of those tasked with providing assistance.
There are limited resources (artificially limited, because of course we can always afford weapons programs and tax breaks for owners of capital and real estate). The public assistance system is non-trivially optimized to weed out people who don't need it, in order to conserve these resources, and this process can be fraught and combative. "Prove to me that you're a failure" is the message and the context.
Time-consuming - it takes forever. People on public assistance are often assumed to have no jobs. They have to go (usually slowly, on mass transit if they're lucky) from one government office to another, making and keeping appointments weeks or months ahead. They have to do this often while they live in car that provides shelter, but not transportation, since they can't afford gas.
Uncertain - a large portion of the US political apparatus has for decades spent vast energy and resources in reducing public assistance, and in demonizing those who use it ("welfare mothers"). As we speak the US administration is pushing through further reductions, designed (they say) to "push people from welfare to work."
No surprise that people in that context don't feel free or safe enough to create.
Some people can work productively on their hobbies without a job kicking them in the pants every morning. But those people are so motivated, they're going to be doing real jobs anyway!
I live in a country with generous social welfare. Nobody is really too poor to pursue hobbies while unemployed. But they don't seem to be doing it. They do drugs instead. They probably feel useless and bad about life. Having a free house and food and healthcare doesn't help. We have a high suicide rate. Uselessness is an awful thing for humans.
Where is all the long term unemployed people's open source software and apps and arts? There's no shortage of unemployed people and those hobbies cost almost zero money, just time. So why aren't we already flooded with them? Or are we?
I'm not sure about your specific country though, I'd guess it's true in all countries(the majority of unemployed people aren't the kinds of people who write software in their free time) but I'm not sure and I'm interested in what you think. I also wonder, if UBI were implemented would it still be true that the motivated, creative people would be the ones who continue to work anyway? I think a larger portion of unmotivated people would drop their jobs and live off of UBI, but there would still be a sizeable portion of people leaving their jobs to pursue creative projects. I myself would definitely quit and start working on my game full time, I did it before without any kind of financial safety net and made some progress, but of course had to go back to work before getting close enough to completion. Having UBI would be life-changing for me
One of the most lingering takeaways from Sebastian Junger’s book “Tribe” for me is how being a valued member of ones society is necessary for mental health. I worry that without addressing those other aspects of mental health, UBI can easily funnel into societal troubles like substance abuse as opposed to creative efforts
Lots of people know what they'd like to do with their lives which would be important for (some) 'other people'. But often, those pursuits are not likely to be highly profitable soon ... if ever. (Many, many famous creatives never got to enjoy their fame.)
Most of them will never be able to afford to (happily, creatively, eagerly) pursue what they'd prefer. Not when they must invest (unhappily, dully, compulsively) most of their energies keeping body-and-soul-together while helping others fulfill their dreams.
We can do better.
Is this alimony/child support? And if it isn't, does alimony and child support not exist in Denmark?
My point is: UBI should only enable people to subsist on government income if they are willing to live in cheap areas with not-so-comfortable living conditions. Some people will jump at this chance, and that's fine. Many other people will decide they want to live in more desirable locations or increase their standard of living and will need to supplement UBI with other income accordingly. If we try to make UBI location-specific it opens up all kinds of arbitrage opportunities and weird incentives that I don't think most people want.
How about family ties? How about ties to their friends and community? These are human beings you are talking about, not robots. At a time when societal problems relating to atomization are increasingly evident (e.g. https://psmag.com/social-justice/americans-are-staying-as-fa...), we hardly need to encourage more of it.
> "UBI should only enable people to subsist on government income if they are willing to live in cheap areas with not-so-comfortable living conditions."
Oooh, yes. We could also give these cheap areas with not-so-comfortable living conditions some snazzy label like, say, "ghetto", "favela" or "slum". /s
All your substantive points can be expressed in the curious style instead. Just be thoughtful, respectful, and open rather than snarky, indignant, and confrontational.
The reality is if we end up with a large amount of people that are not working then our economy is going to be totally hosed because it runs on consumption. If people don't have the money to consume then it just stops functioning.
Giving people free money is like putting a bunch of taped together printer paper over a hole in the wall and calling it "fixed".
When you automate the entire economy, salaries also go down toward zero. That's even part of what allows prices to go down.
So, did workers become richer or poorer on the process? It's a 0/0 situation, and the answer to that question will depend entirely on the path both curves take into 0. But UBI makes that all irrelevant by adding a minimum bound on the numerator. For the purpose of fighting the problems of automation any reasonable amount will do, it doesn't matter that it looks too low today.
But of course, there are other goals that one can reach by UBI, and none of the above apply to those ones.
1 - There are obvious exceptions, some things are truly limited, and some things are limited by the government, culture, or other such forces. The cost of those are the real limit that will say whether the UBI value is too low, not today's cost of living.
Not at all. There are still plenty of limited factors in the production function. The capital itself isn’t unlimited, so you need to price in opportunity costs for using it. Much of the capital needs to support people providing services, so you’re still limited by the labor force for doing things that people prefer having humans do, like knowledge work or personal services.
And then you have to contend with the fact that resources are finite and capacity to extract them is too. We’re a very long way away from automated labor being so effective and so ubiquitous that it fully realizes all the benefits you’re talking about.
In the foreseeable future, it’ll probably be rather unpleasant as shitty robots replace competent humans, meaning the quality of services and products we get are bad but the good versions are prohibitively expensive. And the jobs making things start going away so nobody has the money income to get quality versions of things.
Even if this happens for most other needs / products, housing isn't a commodity, and I expect won't ever be. It will generally be demand driven in terms of relative housing costs, and if you're of the mindset that inequality in and of itself is the problem, the lowest tier housing will never be enough, no matter how sufficient.
Which will just lead to a larger part of newly disposable income being spent on housing.
We already know people pay based on what they can afford.
Unemployment isn't our major problem right now. The problem is that the jobs available for many people pay very little. Back when I made $18K/year, that extra 10-15K/mo would have been enormously helpful. I certainly wouldn't have stopped working; I would have paid down my credit cards and had an easier time training myself to write software.
In the meantime, with most people having at least low-paying jobs, we can start with something more modest.
For the combination of higher taxes and UBI you need to look at how the net effects vary across the population. This isn't easy to do without understanding the taxes, and those tend not to be emphasized. (Yang's proposal has a big hole in it; the taxes aren't enough and he relies on economic growth to make up for it, which is a common dodge many politicians use for big proposals. Not that economic growth can't happen but it's not that predictable for something that hasn't been tried. You don't know when the next recession will be.)
In a zero-sum redistribution scheme intended to reduce inequality, if you're of average or high income you might not directly benefit at all, but that's no reason not to support it. You buy fire insurance for the worst case, not because you plan to make money at it in the average case. You get security from it that's not shown in the estimated average payoff.
It's unsustainable nonsense, and incompatible with any sort of long-term stable future. The economic battery whose poles are the first-world consumer and the third-world sweatshop worker will run down eventually, and it's long past time to start thinking about how we'll adapt when that happens.
I fail to see the major disaster if it becomes somebody else instead.
E: to the downvoters, look up how money gets "printed" in the USA
_If_ the world saw a significant increase in the amount of automation in the foreseeable future, which is by no means certain at all, a less "utopian" solution would be shorter work weeks, and more guaranteed days off IMO. That would create more jobs than there are people and lead to the increase of the minimum wage through market mechanisms. It has to be coupled with Trump-style protectionist trade policy to be viable, however.
Being idle is not a healthy way to live. Being (much) less busy while still being able to support yourself is.
The "robots will take our jobs" argument is just one of the arguments for why we should do this decoupling, among many good arguments, but is the easiest to swallow.
The main problem UBI is solving is expensive duplication of function between status quo means tested social safety net programs and the tax system. A secondary problem that it can solve if benefits are tied to revenues and the right dedicated revenue stream is chosen has to do with calibration of benefits in status quo safety net programs.
> At this time, the amount of UBI should be below what allows a comfortable life, because it would lead to a feedback loop in which people would be increasingly demotivated to work.
As long as you don't automatically tie UBI to inflation this is self limiting since excessive demotivation causes critical labor shortages driving both wages and final goods prices up which (1) lowers the quality of life which can be maintained on UBI so it isn't as comfortable as the nominal benefit would seem to provide, and (2) raises the marginal benefit from chosing to work, both of which serve to negate demotivation.
No easier than general tax cuts—or implementing a UBI—are now.
Why does it make more sense to redistribute the outputs of the robots rather than redistributing the ownership of the robots so that everyone gets and equal share of the output?
The latter approach addresses the root cause of inequality (unequal access to resources) rather than trying to put a bandaid over the wound by constantly having to siphon the money back.
Is there any evidence for this? Is there evidence the money won't go right back into the lottery, consumption of unhealthy food, other vices, or right back into increased rent? What percentage of people will turn around and commit to an unnecessary more expensive car payment?
If you hand people cash, but don't correct a lack of financial knowledge, health knowledge, and overcoming marketing, why do you think it will be spent wisely? Aren't lottery windfalls exact evidence of the opposite?
At at an extreme minimum UBI should come with a budgeting framework. At a more extreme level it may be better as food stamps, health care, and retirement funding. Remember, the Freedom Dividend is instead of other, more directly allocated forms of social support. For those on SNAP and other cash equivalent programs, it's less than $1000 in net benefit, which makes it more net increase in welfare for the middle class than the poorest. A person who currently gets $600 in welfare will be able to upgrade to $1000, gaining $400, but somebody who currently qualifies for nothing gets $1000 more. So sure, the poorest are getting slightly more, but is it really actually tackling inequality, for the poorest to have the smallest net gain in the program?
Suppose 50% of the population is on UBI. Those 50% all need housing. What do you think the probability of the market generating optimal housing is? I’m guessing close to zero.
Planned housing can do far better.
The same with food. Let’s assume part of UBI is given as food stamps and only certain items qualify for use of food stamps. Combine this with required education (class you must attend to get UBI) and the quality of food consumed can increase significantly, helping to lower obesity and all the related problems.
I'm obviously cynical about regulatory capture and dairy, livestock, etc industries lobbying to get their products certified as healthier than they are. With pizza being a vegetable and all now.
I hate the argument that the market will correct with low income housing. The presence of housing alone isn't the problem, it's the desirability of the location and access to infrastructure like groceries and hospitals. Low income housing thrown on the edge of a city causes ghettos. Creating a livable are requires some level of more complex urban planning.
This is the prevailing view among technologists, a group that includes large swathes of romantic people who view themselves as something akin to wizards. Meanwhile, mainstream economics just sees a lot of business as usual.
It doesn't matter how they utilize it, UBI is still reducing inequality. You are allowing families to purchase things they wouldn't have had the money for otherwise. Quality of life purchases that the well-off take for granted.
Meanwhile, the employees who work hard to contribute to GDP and grow the company see a fixed salary. They do not see those dividends for the rest of their lives, instead when they leave a company it's over. Why? Why don't employees build up dividend streams from the companies they helped build? Why do Amazon employees get paid minimum wage and are denied bathroom breaks when Bezos' net worth can swing $9B in a single day? Why aren't all employees, from Janitor to CEO receiving dividends from the success of the company?
It all seems ridiculous to me. We need to encourage people to work hard and innovate, not sit on piles of capital and assets.
I'm someone who invests heavily and takes advantage of the system. But I see the flaws and it really bothers me.
This (and other forms of return) is the motivation for the investor to put up the initial capital.
Do you have an alternative proposal to handle the common case where someone who wants to work hard and innovate needs capital to do so?
External shareholders could still see a return. But I think the days of seeing massive returns on capital need to be over. It should be a fight just to beat inflation imho.
To be honest though I'm still thinking about this a lot and don't have an exact answer. So this idea is in flux. That doesn't mean it's not a problem though.
If fact, its generally considered a poor idea to own shares in the company you work for - if the company takes a downturn, not only do your shares lose value, you're probably also out of a job.
That's not true at all. Investments from the rich contribute greatly to the economy -- otherwise they would not be investments. Let's say that I had a billion dollars, and all I did was stick it into a savings account. The bank uses that to fund mortgages, LoCs, provide business loans, etc. Those all have a direct effect on the economy.
More likely the rich are investing in a combination of VC, real estate, and the stock market. Those are ALL job creators.
Really the only thing you can do with money that DOESN'T contribute to economic growth is bury it in the ground or spend it overseas.
Money spent well causes the economy to grow. Mindlessly spending money on things that aren't worth their cost is simply waste, and causes the economy to shrink.
In economics it is generally assumed that money wouldn't be spent if the transaction wasn't expected to generate a net benefit for the spender. If you make spending money a goal in its own right, however, then that is no longer true, and spending can result in a net loss instead.
Except the fortunate rich who own the housing that the UBI beneficiaries will pay for.
I can see UBI making a few people very, very, wealthy.
Indeed, if UBI becomes a significant possibility (but before it's a certainty), I think that buying low-end rental properties would be a good idea as I'd expect UBI to result in a net increase in household formation. This is literally giving people freedom and agency with which to live their lives in the way they choose.
My guess is the now-incredibly-rich rentiers (with guaranteed income) will start lobbying the government for concessions (e.g. restriction on new housing, tax-breaks) that further distort the very inequality UBI is trying to solve.
No one loves UBI and its noble objectives more than I: but I'm worried about this inherent failure mode.
I think when people approach this problem as "how do we best punish the rich?" rather than "how do we best help the poor?", it's very easy to get stuck spinning in circles.
(IMO) No one should care that there are very rich people. We should instead care that there are not very poor people.
I’m sure, by contrast, you could do UBI in a country with robust state housing and healthcare programs, like for example Austria, and avoid these concerns.
For example, I currently live in a second-tier Midwestern city in the midst of a housing crisis. Wages aren’t great relative to their respective industries, but rents and home prices are still skyrocketing. There’s no influx of new construction outside of the luxury sector in a few neighborhoods, a lot of which sits empty. Meanwhile, existing landlords just collect ever larger checks from their properties without meaningful continued investment.
Median rent in Toledo, OH is $550/mo. With a median household income of $33,687, renters clearly could pay more, but there's no shortage letting landlords demand more.
There is one of your assumptions.
It is more likey be captured by connected rentiers who exclude the more efficient.
IMO
I got this insight from the end chapters of the book "Ghettoside", where the author describes US social security payments to those who are "disabled" as the closest the US has today to a non-universal basic income. Coal miners who are no longer able to work because the coal mine shut down and they have no other skills get this "disability" income, and in Ghettoside the author describes former gang members also qualifying under the rationale that they are unsuited to the formal workforce and are therefore "disabled" as well. But what it can serve to do is break the cycle of criminal behavior: when the former drug dealer gets out of jail, absent other opportunities or a safety net source of funding to cover life's basics, they quickly fall into the path of least resistance and return to their criminal behavior. The social security disability payments give them another option to turn things around. Now, if they transform themselves into a legal entrepreneur or productive employee, they sure don't seem disabled any longer, which is part of the problem with this being a non-universal BI. It is akin to the downsides of a negative income tax: it gives only to some, and when you do that you have opportunities to abuse the system, and you have more process costs/friction and barriers to entry which keep some who should get it from getting it.
Social security disability is an abused program, with attorneys advertising their ability to get you qualified, which is the irksome aspect of this being a non-universal basic income: it is only available to the savvy or those willing to engage an unscrupulous attorney to qualify. So it is a flawed comparison to UBI, but I think the social benefits described in Ghettoside deserve more attention.
I think the current system in the US is designed to degrade and abuse people for being poor. People who depend on welfare and disability payments are constantly treated with suspicion as grifters and fraudsters because so many others actually are. They spend most of their time fighting with the government to keep their benefits while having little to no hope of replacing them.
A UBI would allow them to go out and get a job without being afraid they will just have their other benefits cut. There is no means testing or degrading requirements to "Prove" you or your dependent is disabled. The government has no reason to investigate you or pry into your personal life.
UBI is another way to inject money into the system, giving it to the people who would most likely spend it, creating demand and this spurring the economy.
However, they're both from the same vein of continually creating new money to sustain ever-growing price inflation. A policy which is utterly nonsensical in the face of rapid technological progress where most prices should be continually trending downwards like we see for computing technology itself. Insistence on continual inflation is precisely what has created the current rent treadmill most everybody is on, via only being able to pay interest-rent on skyrocketing assets.
A real alternative would be to simply stop printing all that money in the first place, let interest rates actually rise, curtail much of this speculative waste-investment (eg the VC's paying to put electric scooters in rivers), and let workers actually get ahead by saving and not having their wages erode. Ideally workers could save up enough to demand lower working hours, but inflationism has gone on for so long its disastrous results need to be addressed directly - eg redefine "full time" employment to be 25 hours a week, with overtime after that (it should have been directly halved to 20 after dual-income households became the norm).
Of course this itself would do nothing immediate to help the poorest members of society. Some balanced-budget UBI would still certainly help them, and should not be ruled out. But we need to untangle the problems of the poor (which can be solved by direct help), with the problems of the working class (who actually have income, but it's being vacuumed up by rent-seekers).
Who is to decide the amount of that? How will it be decided when living cost is greatly ( or literally ) dependent on property pricing? Hence different location will have different living cost. Food, as in raw material assuming you cook yourself which is the cheapest option, could varies from state or even countries, but even if there is a 50% difference between the same items, the total amount spent on food will still be minimal. If you are allowed $4 per day and a 50% increase is only $2 increase, or $60 per month difference.
Where as housing prices, rent will differ. Does UBI assumes I am going to live in remotely in small village? I dont have to live in a Citi, but I need somewhere to live while having the opportunities to find a job. And the future is heading towards megacities.
Basically what I am suggesting is, it is sort of pointless to discuss UBI or basic income guarantee without discussing housing. Which is not only the biggest expenses for living, but also the biggest asset class in our economy, and also the biggest problem.
I dont have an answer to those questions, but it just seems every time people discuss UBI or NIT ( Negative Income Tax ) or other BIG ( basic income guarantee ), we tends to ignore housing, or suggest hosting is not what BIG is hoping to solve. That is on the assumption with BIG people could basically live with sufficient food and water without dying if they are without jobs.
Presumably the same people who decide what your taxes are right now.
You are right about housing though.
Q: Who is to decide the amount of that? There are two main aspects to this. A: The goal is to eliminate or at least severly reduce the number of individuals living in poverty, or a basic needs package of sorts (emphasis on basic needs). So the povertly line is usually used as a guide. The first prevailing thought here is to peg it to the povertly line, which is already calculated annually by HHS. The second is to have a fixed rate that roughly equals the povertly line, but to periodically reassess it to bring it back up to par, sort of how we handle social security rates / minimum wage, etc. lastly, there is an equal distrobution of revenue. 2019 UBI tax generates 2.5T in revenue? the 250m adults get 10k in 2020.
I personally prefer the pegging to the poverty line. HHS sets the poverty line, and therefore the rate yearly, IRS dishes out the checks monthly. But thats just my opinion.
Q: How will it be decided when living cost is greatly ( or literally ) dependent on property pricing? Hence different location will have different living cost. Food, as in raw material assuming you cook yourself which is the cheapest option, could varies from state or even countries, but even if there is a 50% difference between the same items, the total amount spent on food will still be minimal. If you are allowed $4 per day and a 50% increase is only $2 increase, or $60 per month difference. A: The intent is not to completely replace your needs, so this concern is not usually a factor taken into consideration when calculating a UBI. Your assumption that UBI would be more valuable or less valuable depending on where you live is correct, however is not a concern as the UBI should theoretcially be able to allow you to live _at_ the poverty line somewhere in the country, and therefore the choice to continue to live in poverty realative to your location is _theoretically_ a choice to continue your state. A second answer to this is that states, and cities can adjust the UBI. A federal UBi is set to the federal poverty line, states can opt to charge an additional tax, and suppliment federal UBI with the tax revenue to only members of the states. Same for cities. So someone living in high plains of Wyominig may only receive the federal UBI, someone in LA could be receiving 3, Federal, Cali, and LA ubi's.
Q: Where as housing prices, rent will differ. Does UBI assumes I am going to live in remotely in small village? I dont have to live in a Citi, but I need somewhere to live while having the opportunities to find a job. And the future is heading towards megacities. A: Assuming we live in the Federal Only UBI, the assumption is that your day to day will not change. If you currently live and work in the city, you will continue to. You may see some modest inflation in items like rent, however, you should be no _worse off_ than you currently are, but hopfully better off. UBI's goal is not to make it so no one ever has to work. That would be detrimental to society as we know it. The goal is to reduce the number of individuals living in poverty. So, UBI should _allow_ individuals who are forced into cities to leave, since many people follow the jobs as it were, those individuals that are content to live in BFE are welcome to, without the pressure of work. It should also allow individuals to reduce hours / be a single income family. Many parents would like to stay at home with the kids, but are unable to do so, or at least for a period of time. UBI will help reduce the income pressures we face today. But once again, COL in the city is not usually considered in factoring the UBI. If you live in a city, and you receive a UBI, there would likely be very little expectations of change for you. The individuals who it is suppsoed to help (homeless) should see a huge gain. They could pay for food, theoretically afford a buss ticket to a new town outside of the city center since they no longer need to beg, and get cheap rent to get their feet under them. In a year or two, they could choose relocate back to the cities with a career if they so choose, etc. If we assume a local UBI to supliment the federal UBI, it is possible that you could quit working for an income and keep your current situation. But then agian, there would be less tax revenu to pay for the local UBI, which would mean
Statement: Basically what I am suggesting is, it is sort of pointless to discuss UBI or basic income guarantee without discussing housing. Which is not only the biggest expenses for living, but also the biggest asset class in our economy, and also the biggest problem.
Statement: I dont have an answer to those questions, but it just seems every time people discuss UBI or NIT ( Negative Income Tax ) or other BIG ( basic income guarantee ), we tends to ignore housing, or suggest hosting is not what BIG is hoping to solve. That is on the assumption with BIG people could basically live with sufficient food and water without dying if they are without jobs.
Comment: Housing costs are a huge part of the discussion, and are frquently discussed in the UBI circles. It is not ignored, however not the primary driver, and often not addressed in commentaries or summaries of the hugely complex subject. UBI is a wellfare program, full stop. Just as most of our wellfare programs are not designed to be an income replacement, but rather a suppliment, UBI is the same thing. For those of us who currently live in a high COL area, and shoose to do so, we will see very little difference in our day to day. Our bills will mostly stay the same, our jobs the same, and our expenses the same. We can expect that local price inflation, especially in the rent area, will most likely erase any gains we see from UBI. And that is OK, as we are not the ones UBI is implimented for. UBI is for the homeless, the overworked, and those who teeter at the povertly line. Its goal is to prevent a household from spiraling into a hole they cannot ever climb out of if they lose a job for a month. Like other wealfare programs, individuals may choose to use it as their sole means. There are housholds that use foodstamps as their sole source to purchase food with, or use the housing suppliments as their full rent checks. While the programs are not designed to be full replacements for these, some people make it work that way, and thats fine (depending on who you ask). UBI is simply a proposal to replace the many different and complicated and sometime unreliable wellfare programs with a single universal one. Some people may find a way to make UBI be their sole income source, and i look forward to seeing the creative things frugality will impliment. However for the overwhelming vast majority of us, nothing much will change. UBI should allow someone more mobility in the job market, should allow those in poverty a little more breathing room, should reduce the risk of starting your own business, could allow a household to leave the city if you wish since jobs dont keep them there. But for those of us living in a city apartment, (a little over half the country) we will see an additional ~$1k in our checking account each month, and probably an additional $500-$750/m in localized inflation (mostly in rents).
a) they deserve it, all of them
b) it's sad, but it's not our problem
c) this is not acceptable and something should be done about it by the state
People who believe (a) and (b) are not going to support UBI. Once people accept (c), only then can we start talking about how to deal with it, and the disadvantages and distortions of the current means-tested system. Liberating the system from means-testing means completely giving up on (a) and accepting that trying to sort the poor into deserving and undeserving is both intractable and hostile to human dignity. But it's a very long way to get there.
Also very interested in proposals on joint ventures between the church and state to fill the gaps, as UBI will no question still have gaps. But overall UBI is simply replace a slow (testing and reuping, lots of minute conditions), unreliable (delays, not gaurenteed to be there forever), innefficient(high administation overhead, lots of monmey diverted to distrobution and testing, rather than the end individuals) wellfare program(s) with a fast (universal, so no testing), reliable (gaurenteed for everyone, so no thinking it will go away if you get a job or if you run out of balance) and efficient(little admin overhead, higher % of cash going to individuals) wellfare program.
Many UBI schemes propose that local institutions like states and/or cities also impliment a UBI tax to suppliment the federal. so still a local issue and local solution too.
Being that this is too difficult a logistical problem, we instead propose as a solution raising many times that amount of money in campaign donations, lobbying, and volunteer hours to convince a significantly larger group of (the exact same) people (who we don't think will give a dollar or ten to the same cause) to spend at least that much in gas and time to get up and go vote for specific or general measures to care for these people instead.
Do you see the issues with this logic?
If workers spend a few days per year to pay for your ubi that takes away that time of their life. If they spend 1% of their life working for ubi it’s 1% of workers life lost. That’s asking quite a lot.
To the downvoters of my initial comment: I don’t want people to die on the street. But I doubt ubi is an adequate cure either.
If I considered saving no longer worthwhile, I wouldn’t consume more. I would work less and enjoy more free time. Of course this leads to over proportional less taxes for the state or ubi.
I don’t see why you couldn’t try ubi in small scale by the fans. The most obvious reason why it wouldn’t work on small scale and only on state or global level is because supporters want someone else to pay for it.
Yes, obviously? Preferably the people with more than one megayacht?
According to [1] the top 3% (>250k USD household income per year) earn in total per month
127,300,000,000 = 3,800,000 * 402,000 / 12 USD
vs
300,000,000,000 = 300,000,000 * 1,000 USD
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
"Do you want $1000 each for twenty years or a war for twenty years" was of course a question that was never on the table in 2002.
Check your numbers: US military budget 2019 [1] is $686Bn or $60 Bn per month vs $300 Bn per month for ubi.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
I have a better solution than airdropping everyone welfare money so we can laze around all day - make it easier to start businesses. It’s extremely easy for me to create a tech company that scales to millions of users. It’s extremely difficult for me to give massages, cut hair, sell retail products in a physical location, and innumerable useful services that require licenses, bureaucracy, tax forms, inspectors, and on and on.
Even worse is that whatever the poor saves is immediately lost to inflation - education, healthcare, housing, and literal inflation to the fed printing money.
Rather than bandaid government-created problems with more government and a disincentive to create value for society, I wish we would let people other than CS majors become entrepreneurs organically.
And people are unemployed, or worse they are employed but at a rate they can’t afford to live, so are one of the tens of thousands of homeless in LA alone. They work 18 hours a day 7 days a week, so are dangerous as they drive to their third job at 3 in the morning which causes a crash which means massive traffic problems all day.
Even if you are a cold blooded Victorian thetr are benefits to keeping your customers alive and with enough free time to buy the crap you peddle.
Yes it is. If you have tasks that cannot be automated, people's labour will have value. It would require AI that is as good as any human, and that is cheaper of course, to eliminate all jobs. And even then rich people may prefer human labour for nostalgic or signalling reasons. Eliminating all jobs is a tall order.
That said, I’m not a fan of UBI. Yes, do tax the hell out of people who made fortunes from their inherited wealth and social connections / status, but use the money to hire people to do something useful and purposeful. E.g., roads, parks, schools, healthcare, basic research.
Maybe we try old fashioned Keynes style policy again, as Reagan / Laffer nonsense seems to have objectively failed for 90+ percent of the population, then maybe we discuss UBI if still needed.
Edit: P.S. I mostly like your comment, otherwise.
That's probably because the public does not have much at stake with a tech company. Especially with all those data leaks which happen regularly and nobody does anything because nobody cares.
If a tech business fails or misbehaves, it's probably only founders will be losing money and time. And then can even protect themselves from the users with a TOS which basically says "nope, your virtual losses are your virtual losses", and everybody is trained to just tick the check box.
While if a physical business fails then there are real people at loss who will have to look for a new massagist, a new hairdresser, a new shop, etc. And that's not even touching the subject or running business poorly: damaged joints, botched haircut and poisonous or otherwise unsafe products are way more tangible and likely to lead to action with more weight than shitposting about yet another serivce.
Oh, the humanity!
> And that's not even touching the subject or running business poorly: damaged joints, botched haircut and poisonous or otherwise unsafe products
Airbnb, Uber, etc. run into safety issues too. Other big tech companies can have privacy issues, and even data integrity issues. I'd much rather find a new barber than have Google or Facebook accidentally delete my account.
My big concern with that approach is that we'd see landlords immediately bump rents, or we'd cut medical support for people (when medical bills can clearly be many multiples of ubi).
But I'm very pro ubi if we can figure out how to protect the people who rely on it (maybe with some sort of rent control?), support it with other social programs like healthcare, and build some educational resources about how to effectively use it.
Healthcare is also its own problem that is widely discussed on HN. Any sane national healthcare system would largely prevent huge increases in healthcare costs. Our privatized system is just a horrible model all around.
Also, it's worth noting that most UBI proposals include indexing the UBI amount to inflation, such that if UBI disbursements do lead to inflation, the UBI payments go up to account for it so that UBI recipients are at about the same means on a year-to-year basis.
This is also the reason why it makes no sense to fight wealth inequality. Without wealth inequality, there wouldn't be wealth, only a baseline.
What UBI tries to solve isn't a bug, but a feature.
Also, if you are starving or homeless in a first world country the fault lies with you. There's so many social security in place, you just have to make use of it.
You can't possibly believe this...
There are millions of children who don't have enough food in America. There are millions more people who cannot afford to keep their heat on, or are evicted because of a small unplanned repair bill.
To say that millions of people should be starving, homeless, poorly clothed, dealing with crippling anxiety over keeping a roof over their heads, etc. is a feature is borderline sociopathic.
But even beyond the aspirations of a UBI/negative income tax, the real problem with any such proposal will be implementation and policy details which most UBI proponents don't talk about much if at all.
Will UBI be counted as income? How will this interact with other programs such as SNAP, healthcare subsidies, HUD housing subsidies, or any number of state operated programs? Will they be mutually exclusive?
Will existing policies or laws need to be modified in order to accommodate such a proposal?
They do talk about this, you just haven't been listening. Yang proposes a voluntary switch between needs-based welfare and UBI combined with a national VAT.
https://ubicalculator.com/ provides a good amount of detail about how various UBI plans will be funded.
Certainly automation will potentially free up some labor, and the currently underway automation of thought processes will take out some (or all) middle class roles. Until there is some sort of direct democratic methodology i would not trust any of these utopian policy makers. A future where you own nothing, and timeshare a place of living, transport etc strikes me as one with zero social mobility and is a prime candidate for corruption.
Its a place you need the stainless steel rat to visit and disrupt.
Otoh i guess i could be wrong and it could be just super.
I will say that the basic thrust of the article seems to resonate for me, in that I did come to hear of UBI first because of a utopian ideal.
In my case, it was tax policy. I was very interested in what sort of tax policy would be agnostic about your family structure, imagining a utopia where the government does not need to know about weddings and divorces in theory.
If you still want to judge a household by its total income, as well as the number of people living in it, then the only option is to use a flat tax with a universal standard deduction being the only way to add any sort of progressive taxation structure to it.
But with a little bit more insight, that deduction turns out to be significant if it creates a negative output: if you don't give people back this money, then your system is not actually family-structure agnostic. And with a little bit more insight, when you pair that deduction with that flat rate, you are giving everybody a universal basic income.
One detail in the article also kindles some remembrance... The criticism “An affordable UBI is inadequate, while an adequate UBI is unaffordable.” I do remember trying to work out the numbers so that the IRS could still collect the same tax amounts on a flat-tax-plus-UBI model and indeed that was... underwhelming. You can just download their info split out by tax bracket and muck around in Excel, but yeah, I remember that if you cap the flat tax at 30% or so the UBI that this equal-IRS-income-tax-revenue assumption generated was... well, it seemed like not very much, heh. I don't think it would have improved the financial state of the bottom, say, 50% compared to progressive taxation; it helps out the bottom 10% way way more than progressive taxation does, and we either have to go to very high tax rates (shifting tax burdens more onto the rich) or just eat the cost at that middle-class level.
A house with a £55k earner and a £5k earner will pay more in tax than a house with two £30k earners (about £2400 a year more, even without student loan repayments)
*(There is an odd £200 tax break for people on lower tax brackets who can apply for a transfer from one person to another, but I think it’s going away)
No, you can just have a normal progressive tax, with the tax assessment unit being the household, and then distribute the taxes so assessed among taxed members of the household by some method (e.g., proportional to income.)
"Flat tax" generally means that any income above whatever the standard deduction is (even if that is zero) is taxed at the same rate.
That removes progressivity from the tax, which in turns is a reflection of the fundamental observation about the marginal value of income - the notion that an extra $1000 to someone who earns $20k a year means something very different than an extra $1000 does to someone who makes $20M a year.
So if you're just arguing for "let's stop using the tax code to promote and inhibit certain kinds of behavior", then you should probably say that.
If you're actually arguing for a conventional "flat tax", then I don't see what that has to with either UBI or "family structure".
(Don't say they aren't thinking about it)
However, there are so many caveats that it requires compromise both on part of those who wish to create such a system and those who wish to participate in such a system. It requires changing society in such that acceptance of a minimal life style is normal and not something to rebel against. It will require acknowledging that this minimal lifestyle may not be in a location you truly desire but it will never be in a location you cannot survive.
No UBI based society will survive long as purveyors of jealously and envy prey on it. This pretty much tanks the idea as long as current political methods are employed which extort both to gain power and authority over others. Look how much political effort is expended in making people dislike others simply for what they have. Worse is the idea insinuated that many did not get what they have by fair means. All this will doom any society trying to move to UBI because there cannot be any floor that would be acceptable.
The complex problem is that in such a large population base the numbers of people who will seek to take advantage of it can outstrip those who want to improve upon it. This is exaggerated as many succumb to this thinking because of the near constant bombardment of envy pushed by those with political aims.
Absent human-level AI, there will remain tasks that only humans can do. Hence we will have jobs.
But truly, if we do get human-level AI, it seems to me we will have bigger problems than unemployment. I hate to get all Nick Bostrom, but it really does seem like the objective functions of the machines would be all that matters in this scenerio. As it is their objective functions, not laws, that would decide our fate. Either human-level AI is far off, in which case technological unemployment is not a worry, or it is not in which case technological unemployment is the least of our worries.
Fewer jobs with more people seeking them will drive wages down.
So the last gasp of human labor will look like a few excessively educated, qualified and well-connected people competing fiercely for the few remaining low-paying (but still paying!) jobs. The rest live on government benefits or rely on the charity of the trillionaires.
Those with pre-existing capital use it on automated businesses to multiply their fortunes. (And I bet they'll also automate personal security, a necessity when a trillionaire can still be killed by any of the other 10 billion humans. That's how you get private armies.)
Unfortunately, a utopia for the rich involves slave labor, inequal enforcement of law, and large class differences and privileges.
A true Utopia is very democratic to the point of communism. Then came Communism, and the rich and powerful said "no thanks" and then usurped the civilization struggle of the cold war to undermine all socialist movements from the New Deal/Great Depression and value the rich and powerful above all.
Anyway, it's funny because the point of UBI to me is pretty obvious in our highly hockey-sticked wealth distribution.
Fundamentally: don't let people starve or go homeless, let them get reasonable health care, and that will trigger enough GDP goods/services exchange that the economic impact shouldn't actually be that negative.
Although globally this is just sheltering Americans from the economic class they are all headed toward, the same economic class that the Chinese factory worker is: disposable worker bee, and constructing an intermediate global class for first world citizens, but it's kind of been like that informally for decades now.
The difference is the free trade economists can't keep saying with a straight face that free trade will be good for American workers as their jobs disappear, they retreat to opioids and suicide, and the rest of the global workforce get a couple cents an hour raise.
Well, at least the rest of the world has universal healthcare.
1) It simplifies the social support system and makes it more market oriented. Maybe it doesn't eliminate needs-based support totally, but that's a good goal. Need-based support creates bad incentives because it encourages people to be needy.
2) It gives people freedom to take risks and pursue what they find important. Right now many people do pointless work; sometimes this is even supported by society. All work should be meaningful, otherwise it shouldn't be done.
3) Personally, I would like to spend my time developing open-source software. That isn't sustainable without a UBI. UBI could fix the open-source funding model.
This needs some unpacking, I think.
Though there is a way in which this is true, it's not the way that most right-wing pundits would have us all believe. The commonly-sold myth of welfare is that there are people for whom welfare (or whatever other "needs-based support") is something they desire, so they kick back and don't try to improve themselves, so that they stay needy—essentially, they deliberately become moochers leeching off the system.
The research I've seen indicates that if people like that exist, they are a rounding error on the books.
What's much, much more common is people who desperately need their support being forced to avoid bettering themselves, lest they fall into the hole between "the government admits that you need this" and "you can actually provide for yourself." (One particular example I've heard of is a disability system where owning more than $2000 in assets of any kind results in you getting kicked out of the system permanently.)
Now, what's also much more common is people who genuinely need the support being unable to get together the wherewithal to prove that they do need it. (For instance, a form must be submitted in person, or an in-person interview is required, but the person doesn't own a car, or the disability they're trying to prove made them unable to drive, or the office that they have to get to is only open during the hours they work and missing a shift will get them fired...)
Needs-based support is bad, and we need to move away from it as much as possible to universal support, but it's not really because of malicious people preying on the system.
I don't think robots will steal all jobs, but people will have to do new types of jobs. If we can't give them a save space to learn these new jobs we are doomed in the long run.
Please consider not burying my comment.
Yes, this is article is very politically timed given the upcoming primaries.
I would like to see some objective standard on which the UBI would be set. Similar to how the Fed sets interest rates.
But it is a political disaster. It creates a fundamental divide in society.
Are you tired of hearing about folks receiving undeserved 'handouts' for things like food stamps today?
UBI would supercharge that and cement it as a fundamental understanding of ones status in society
You are required to feed clothe them and deliver them to school. If you don’t do that you’ll get social services on your back very quickly and eventually they’d be taken into care.
Are we ok if Alex works 40hrs/wk for 50K/yr total income while Brett and his girlfriend work 0 for 30K/yr?
If robots do actually everything prices are zero. No need for BI or GJ.
Basic needs are taken care of, and the ultra rich get to accumulate their wealth.
Also all proposals I have seen are way too low. They will create slums where people will barely survive.
How about doing some pragmatic stuff like universal health care and increasing the supply of low cost housing dramatically? They are pretty much prerequisites for UBI. If we can’t pull that off forget UBI.
Yes, I'm sort of surprised that fixing housing costs is not the first priority of people who want UBI ASAP. As I see it, if you don't start adding supply to the housing market quickly, a UBI would actually become a regressive policy where a tax on consumption (VAT) is effectively transferred to land owners. On the intended effect of reducing inequality, it might be counterproductive.
Since UBI is mainly pushed by wealthy people I wouldn’t be surprised if this was intended.
If a person is poor enough to need UBI, then their major concerns will be housing, food, education and medicare.
All 4 of these are taken care off (to varying degrees) by social welfare structures in place in various western economies.
I do not see why UBI would be a better alternative to instead directing funding towards welfare programs for the above 4 amenities instead ?
I dislike UBI, because it pretends the problems are not of total free-market capitalism's own making. UBI won't solve the problem by addressing the symptom. Centralized regulation and collective bargaining instead address the problem head on. Thus, I find them to be better solutions.
At The micro level sure, money has other roles like reservoir of wealth, but as the marginal cost of production drops precipitously “wealth” becomes less and less useful.
The idea that you can give $X to everyone solves a lot of problem breaks down when the basic necessities are owned by capitalistic oligarchical corporations that resort to rent extortion.
Like US healthcare will suck in all the UBI money. It’s optimized to serve healthcare at the highest cost it can get away with.
Same with rents in most part of big cities. No new construction means money is sucked by the landlords who get ever wealthier.
The idea of universal basic services is that you can get access to most basic necessities within a reasonable capped price. Like electricity, water, cell internet connection, trash collection, groceries, transport, healthcare, education, basic housing etc.
So if the govt hands out $X00/month to every citizen, one can be guaranteed to receive the basics of their choice per their lifestyle.
As in money by itself doesn’t solve the problem, what you can buy with money solves the actual problems.
The supposed goals of capitalism are great: competition, innovation, refinement, transformation, and others. The problem is that those are goals they teach school children. They aren’t the primary goal that actually matters in practice. If capitalism could be refocused to these more ideal goals it would be better, perhaps more utopian. The difference is that the primary goal is highly exclusive while the ideal goals are highly inclusive.
Also, from my econ classes, isn't capitalism fundamentally just property rights and freedom of trade? Some argue that capitalism is more specifically about gaining rent (money) through capital alone, and they criticize that this is undeserved and to the cost of others. But in my view, such criticism ignores risk of loss and potential long term changes.
Cartels and Monopolies. Everywhere. Almost all sectors are down to a 1-4 dominant companies that simply entrench themselves with regulatory protections and rent seek for revenue generation.
Even seemingly pure free market commodity markets like frozen concentrated orange juice have shadow cartels like ADM and Cargill, and billions of government assistance and price manipulation.
The core concept of capitalism, multiple individuals pooling their financial resources together for a unified purpose, seems quite logical and noble to me and certainly not inherently evil in and of itself.
I think the real problem that anti-capitalists (who I find often do not understand even what money is and where it comes from) have is that they conflate the problems resulting from corporate personhood with relatively free-market capitalism.
The concepts of private property ownership, the rule of and due process of law and habeas corpus are dramatic improvements overall in the human condition and are part of the core that makes the US in particular and as well as other "Western" countries the enviable result of such concepts.
I'm of the opinion that corporate personhood is, along with money printing outside of the scrutiny of the general populace and guided by multinational origins, an insidious "backdoor" that overrides the freedoms that result from those concepts.
I am not an economics law or political science professor or anything remotely close to that, though. I could be barking up the wrong trees but giving abstract concepts like corporations the same rights as humans seems like it screws up so many things - take political election financing as one of many examples.
This is a really great discussion thread, though.
Otherwise we have Great Depression again, when there was a lot of production, but public simply didn't have any money to buy it.
The solution last time was to basically distribute money to poor, e.g. fund mega-projects with tax money. I feel like UBI sounds pretty much like that as well.
...why again do you need customers?
Mass infrastructure investment would be great, trouble is we need educated workers now, not day labourers, so we need to combine the infrastructure building with education both formal and on the job, ideally at a part time rate, say 3 days a week
I never thought UBI meant communism. If you want more out of life, get a job that pays over-and-above UBI.
The more likely outcome is that prices on a whole lot of things are about to drop drastically. Of course this does nothing to help the people who are left out of a job and can no longer contribute as they are no longer cost-effective. UBI is one option to address this, at least partially. Do you have a better one? Ban AI? Do you happen to be an anti-capitalist, and your convenient solution is (big surprise) to remove capitalism as an economic system?
I'm not saying the effect of more people being outcompeted from the job market will never be a problem. Perhaps parts of it will be solved with income redistribution being increased. Perhaps part of the effort will be in creating new jobs where humans can not be replaced. Some cookie cutter "anti megacorp" rhetoric ain't likely to help much.
Seriously, if you have that kind of power, what's the incentive to let everyone else live?
Ethics and morals, maybe? Basic human empathy? I think I get where you're going with this. There are those, sociopaths and psychopaths for example, who would go to any length to get that kind of power and... what, when they have their T-3000s they're suddenly gonna have a come-to-Jesus moment? Unlikely, yeah.