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Comment by ponker | Hacker News Reader

I think you also have to take into account the political sustainability of a policy though. It might be better for a poor person to get $2 cash than $2 of bread. But the $2 cash handout will be perennially opposed by some voters. The program eligibility will be slashed, the program will be a political football at election times, etc... while the bread program will be mostly noncontroversial and allowed to operate in peace.

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The political argument in favor of universal basic income stresses the importance of the universal.

That is, when the argument is "the others are getting cash", some will oppose it. But if it's "we all get cash", the opposition is less.

In America, Social Security straight up gives up cash to ALL older Americans. Assuming you live long enough, you'll get Social Security. It's not immune but it remains popular. Indeed, efforts to cut back on Social Security are framed as attempts to "save" it and keep the program solvent.

In contrast, food stamps, welfare, and unemployment benefits are very much on the chopping block year after year, their recipients stereotyped as "welfare queens" trying to cheat the system.

Technically Social Security doesn't go to all Americans. You have to work a minimum amount (and therefore pay a minimum amount in) to qualify. It's also possible to opt-out of social security, although it's not trivial to do so (IIRC you do this by claiming a conscientious objector status or something like that).

Hang on is social security tied to the draft?

No, there's a religion-based opt-out for religions that object to government support. But it only applies to income from the church (such as to ministers).

There are a few other narrow cases as well, such as student workers and certain government jobs.

At least one way is to get a religious exemption.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020315/there-any-wa...

I thought I read at some point that several decades in the past there was a period when you could opt out of Social Security and put retirement in one's own hands.

I always wanted to look up that history for when that forked path was allowed and when it was eliminated and why. The author of the piece I read mentioned how he earned much better returns with the money he otherwise would have had he put it into social security and was thankful he took the more "risky" route.

> That is, when the argument is "the others are getting cash", some will oppose it. But if it's "we all get cash", the opposition is less.

But it's a sleight of hand. It's "you'll get it too (but I will take the same amount out of your pockets by increasing your taxes, ha!)", and then hoping that people will not realize it. That's quite the bet.

Social security is "slight of hand" too. If you make an average of just $1k/mo before retirement, your SS benefit is $900/month. But if you made 10x ($10k/mo), your SS benefit is only 3x as much [0], despite you paying 10x the taxes during your career.

While this is nowhere near as progressive a tax as regular income tax, it's still a wealth transfer from high earners to low earners.

0. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/piaformula.html

> But the $2 cash handout will be perennially opposed by some voters. The program eligibility will be slashed, the program will be a political football at election times, etc... while the bread program will be mostly noncontroversial and allowed to operate in peace.

It's completely the opposite. You have to call the cash a tax credit and give it to everyone. Then no one can get rid of it because nobody wants a tax hike.

As soon as you start having eligibility restrictions or purchasing restrictions or effort-based gatekeeping, it reduces the number of people who benefit from the program, which is how it gets ruined or dismantled once the number of beneficiaries are no longer enough people that politicians have to care about them.

Make it so that everybody below the 51st percentile income is a net beneficiary and the program is locked in.

There’s so many head games that goes into US politics that seems pointless. Democrats in particular compromise with themselves so much before even offering something to republicans before compromising even more.

Republicans pretty much never do that, it’s just boom, let’s give big tax cuts to the rich or stop all immigration.

Left side of the US needs to boldly actually fight for things rather than step my step planning out what “seems reasonable to republicans”, it’s just a bad losing idea, go boldly with what’s the moral and reasonable thing.

Consider how all sides are pretty fractured, left and right. Policies that were widely popular for the political right a decade ago (free, unrestricted trade) is now dead in the water with tariffs or the threat of them raining down. Similarly what’s “important” on the left is very fluid, and the political left is headed for the same upheaval the political right experienced with the tea party where it essentially became a populist platform.

I disagree that "the right is fractured." The US political right has never been more unified, and its unifier is Trump. Trump is wildly popular among Republicans, and all the old seams have been closed: religious vs business, populist vs rich, etc.

The left is legitimately fractured, but maybe it's not as bad as it looks. Sound and fury on social media in the Bernie camp, yet the party coalesced strongly around Biden.

I'd like to hear the case for a left "political upheaval." Where will it come from? Bernie's theory was that youth would vote en masse, and that did not happen.

You're just observing the fact that the Democrats had a primary fight this year and the Republicans didn't because Trump is the incumbent.

The problem the left is having right now is articulating what it is they actually want to do. Their main rallying cry for some time has been that they're not Trump, but then what are they?

Not being Trump might just be enough.

A vote for "mystery box" is a vote for Not That Other Guy.

It seems less than inspiring.

Then trick is, the 'compromise' suggestions are what the democrats want.

The USA democrats aren't a left wing party, they're a center and even center right party. A politically established left wing doesn't exist in the USA like it does in Europe.

The "compromise" suggestions are terrible. I half suspect the Democrats propose them because they're trying to preserve the problem so they can run on trying to solve it again next time. (The Republicans have done the same thing with the war on drugs/terror.)

> The USA democrats aren't a left wing party, they're a center and even center right party. A politically established left wing doesn't exist in the USA like it does in Europe.

"The USA republicans aren't a right wing party, they're a center and even center left party. A politically established right wing doesn't exist in the USA like it does in Saudi Arabia."

You can anchor anything anywhere. The Saudis aren't really right wing because they're not literally Hitler. The Nordic countries aren't really left wing because they have private industry. It isn't really saying anything.

Even the concept is flawed. Is a tax cut for the poor a left-wing program because it goes to the poor, or a right-wing program because it's a tax cut and implies a reduction in the size of government?

It matters if a policy is sound, not whether it's dexter or sinister.

This viewpoint is often touted by those on the political left but has no evidentiary basis that I've seen, certainly. At most the democratic party has a strong tendency of allowing its most fringe members an out-sized voice in the interest of inclusion, which only pushes away its much larger moderate base. Perhaps the form of "compromise" you are referring to is just the more extreme viewpoints being filtered out as actual reasonable policy proposals are formed.

EDIT: Which, by the way, also happens in the Republican party. See, for instance, the repeal vs replace movement and how those went nowhere.

Well the success of the uncompromising tea party in taking over the Republican Party and leading the way to Trump seems pretty obvious.

I’m not sure how anyone who follows Democrats wouldn’t see the constant compromises unless they’re center or center right. Pelosi has control of the House but refuses to pass extremely popular ideas like pay check guarantees or cash per month for everyone, or rent cancellation etc.

It could setup a showdown in the senate where republicans have to vote down very popular ideas, but she refuses.

That’s just a recent example, it happens continuously...

Yeah that's why dumbass Pelosi introduced a 3 billion dollar bill that she knew would never see the light of day.

>stop all immigration

Regan's amnesty for over 3 million illegals: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303...

Bush doubles immigration: https://immigration.laws.com/immigration-act-of-1990

Trump supports immigration in "greatest numbers ever" in 2019 State of the Union: https://time.com/5521860/2019-state-of-the-union-trump-trans...

The GOP has supported immigration since the civil war. Both parties are controlled by the same political forces, and neither are on the real left or right, however hard though they pretend to be.

One of these three is not like the other

I would look at Food Stamps and revise your argument.

And when Republicans don’t want to abolish food stamps, they are trying to make it less cash driven.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-budget-resurrects-har...

I would not go as far to say it operates in peace, but not having it cash based is the position of the less extreme people.

I do not believe "some voters" will motivate the politicians. Instead it is the bread manufacturers, farms, importers, and every other large business with enough weight to convince politicians that a bread coupon is better for Americans than cash. Unsurprisingly they do this with cash not coupons.

Actually the reverse. UBI is very much a neo-libral approved thing, as they have now concentrated so much of the wealth and left so little that the bottom is threatening to fall out of the system that for them is a perpetual money printing machine. So they would rather give a tiny amount to the serfs to prevent them from revolting. And unlike a loafof bread, they can still seduce them to spend their UBI check on conspicuous consumption, then blaming them for 'irresponsible spending' so their own conscience about their greed is appeased as 'if we gave them more money they would just spend it on more beer and a larger TV'.

This is the wrong argument I would say. If its economically the correct policy then all parties should be saying it and convincing the non-believers about the efficacy of the solution. Unfortunately there is no integrity in politics to do the right thing these days and so this will never happen. One party just opposes the other party's positions irrespective of whether they are good or not. Democrats are at least a bit better in that regard, they would not oppose the proposal outright, instead they try to criticize the implementation. Republicans on the other hand would argue (in unison) that killing babies is alright if the democrats say it's wrong.

>One party just opposes the other party's positions irrespective of whether they are good or not.

This was the proper place to stop. Both parties are full of politicians.

This kind of logic could be applied to any major social change in the past few centuries. It's always less friction to maintain status quo. And then change happens and everybody forgets about it. Is anybody perennially opposed to women suffrage anymore? Or is it a subject of a political football?

This is an american perspective. In the UK, people are proud to be "on the dole" and very few support restricting it.

EDIT: Of course brits will still look for work. My point is that Ive seen brits in talk shows audiences talk about taking public assistence without thinking of themselves as "bad people" the way American conservatives would. The desire to eliminate all public assistance is absent in Europe. Don't mean to offend brits, I think you guys have the right attitude here. Take assistance if you need it and dont needlessly refuse to help others.

As a Brit, I've never heard of anyone being "proud" of being on the dole - and the actual amount people get from Jobseekers Allowance and Universal Credit are pitifully tiny - the current JSA of £75/week doesn't even cover my weekly food shopping costs, let alone my mortgage.

Obviously if you're on jobseekers you're meant to make the most of what you have.

£75 sounds like an extravagant weekly shop, even for a couple with a child.

I have a Red Bull addiction.

The notion that people are proud to be 'on the dole' in the UK is deeply pejorative and not at all backed up by the evidence.

For example, sequence LFM2 at the Office of National Statistics entitled "inactive - wants a job". That's 1,869,000 people at the last estimate.

The overwhelming number of people who end up short of work due to the structural failures of our current economic system want to work. And they should have the opportunity to do so.

People on "the dole" here in the UK make up about 5% of benefits claims[1], and the proportion who are on it voluntarily is smaller still. It's a tiny number. Even if they are proud of it, there are significantly bigger problems that are easier and cheaper to solve than worrying about people who are voluntarily unemployed.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47623277

That's my point. Thanks, I didn't know dole meant a small part of benefits. I thought it just meant any kind of welfare.

I thought it just meant any kind of welfare.

It's a slang term for unemployment benefit. That's somewhat confused these days because there isn't such a thing as unemployment benefit in the UK any more. There's "jobseeker's allowance", "income support", "housing benefit", "universal credit", and a few others, all of which can be claimed by people who are currently looking for work, or in work but on a low income, or who are unable to work. It's a confusing minefield designed to put people off claiming what they're legally entitled to.

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