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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

And people keep saying that basic income is impossible.

This is an astonishing U-turn, and a very welcome one. I just hope the social distancing isn't too late.

> And people keep saying that basic income is impossible.

This has nothing to do with UBI. It's a temporary measure designed to be counter-cyclical against the current catastrophe.

The defining feature of UBI is that it never ends. That's the opposite of temporary measures like this.

The two can't be compared as equivalent.

You understand this only helps in the short term right? Yeah we'll live, we'll also be poorer than ever at the end of this, and someone's gonna have to pay back this debt.

And will be massively expensive, will be financed by borrowing. Can't in any way be used long term.

Yes, of course everybody understands that. Most also understand that the reason for being “poorer than ever at the end of this” will be because of the event itself and not the response to it, will understand that we will collectively have to “pay back this debt” and that either of these facts affect the suitability or otherwise of guaranteed income policies.

>>> the reason for being “poorer than ever at the end of this” will be because of the event itself and not the response to it

I'd beg to differ on that. If the economy was left to crash, the cost of housing and rent could go down, which is the main expense for most households.

What the cash injections are doing is holding these high at all costs, transferring money to those who already have assets. The non owner classes will be poorer than ever, facing ever unaffordable housing with extra taxes to cover the bailout debt.

Instead of this. The government could decide that leases for the tax year 2020-2021 are getting their prices slashed 10% and there would be different consequences on the economy.

It's all largely driven by human decisions. The virus has no say in that.

.. fortunately, this is being borrowed at 0.1%. And we can go lower. Expect to see negative rates. The irony is it might have to be a Tory government that raises taxes to cover it.

It’s in effect a very low interest loan which will keep people from selling assets when the market is down. That’s a huge net positive relative to not doing this.

If it can minimize the odds of a depression, it might even be a cash flow neutral option.

> This is an astonishing U-turn

A u-turn from what previous position and by whom? Universal basic income hasn't really been debated seriously in the UK, so nobody had a previous position to u-turn against.

The previous policy has always centered around increasingly aggressive eligibility testing, to the point that the DWP spends more on appeals in an effort to prevent disabled people being able to eat than it would on just paying them the benefits they are entitled to. Then there's the nightmares of "universal" credit.

Regardless of the merits or demerits of UBI, this is not really a time to study it. The economy has been stopped by the government with the expectation that the government will lift sanctions in the future. That is not an everyday condition at all.

There are many studies, people should first read them. It's not a new idea whatsoever, yet somehow many "tech" guys think they discovered it. It's probably as old as money itself. It's even in the Bible: The Year Of Jubilee, Israelites used to do this regularly, every 50 years. It probably saved them many financial crises.

https://economicprinciples.org/downloads/MMT_%20MP3_MK.pdf

Who said it's impossible? Of course it's possible. But this Conservative government isn't doing that, it's paying businesses to keep their employees on the payroll. That's a very different strategy than UBI.

Of course it's possible. There's a money printer in every central bank, by definition of fat currency. Who says it's impossible? They may say it's a bad idea (by saying something like it will have bad economic consequences).

I keep enough food in my pantry so I can keep eating for a week or two without going to the store. the fact that I have a buffer to draw on doesn't mean I can keep eating forever without going to the store.

The economy circular, so its more like if you also hard a garden and used your poop as fertiliser.

> And people keep saying that basic income is impossible.

It's not impossible, but Americans voted against it overwhelmingly less than two months ago, well after this epidemic had already started.

I thought the election was in November?

Probably referring to the lack of support for Andrew Yang in the primaries.

It's impossible not because its hard to give people money.

It's impossible because the corporate mega machine is already auto programmed to extract as much cash out of people, in ways most people can't even comprehend.

How else do you end up with huge inequality or with a subprime meltdown?

It's not enough to just give people cash, you have to protect them from a machine that has already proved multiple times its vastly superior to any regulatory mechanism on the planet.

If China, South Korea or Japan haven't done any such thing having been hit harder, totally feels like corporate lobbies are pulling the strings in US and UK taking full advantage of fear as they did to get the banks bailed out in 2008.

This is not going to last forever.

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