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Comment by path411 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm just too indoctrinated by reddit at this point, but someone would really have to give me a lot of real world evidence counter to not only the examples where UBI and other programs targeted towards the poor have benefited the economy. But even just to counter the pretty basic logic that more productive members of society helps the economy, and more money in the hands of people spending money, not hoarding money, means a better economy.

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A huge part of this depends on your philosophical axioms about the inherent morality of individuals. Are people default-good or default-bad?

Frankly, this view is the major divide between conservative and liberal. And, it'll directly affect all practical implementations such as giving everyone free money. It's also profoundly philosophical in questioning the essence of the soul, so most people like to get unphilosophically political (which is like trying to make software without knowing a language).

The counter evidence is simple, it costs $300 billion a month to provide 300 million adults with $1,000 a month. That’s $3.6 trillion a year.

That’s the entire federal tax revenue consumed by UBI. So you need to double everyone’s income tax to get back to even.

Of course there is evidence giving people free stuff improves their lives. The problem is that’s an insane amount of money that has to come from somewhere.

To put that in context, the top 1% have an aggregate wealth in the US of about 34 trillion. So we could take all of the net worth from doctors, lawyers, business owners, CEOs, FAANG employees, etc and pay for this for about 10 years. Then we’re left with consuming the middle class and then we’ll just be out of wealth period.

There is just no reasonable explanation for how this will be paid for. Even wealthy countries favorable to socialist policies (e.g. Norway) have nothing like UBI.

Let me turn the question to you. What makes you think UBI is sustainable? You have to have some pretty damn good evidence when you’re betting the entire federal government budget on it.

Despite the "U" in UBI, I would assume these $1k/month payments would phase out at a certain income level. Someone making $20k/month, perhaps even $10k/month, does not need their basic needs propped up.

UBI would likely replace most welfare programs, so that'd just be moving budget around. I'm finding a bunch of numbers for US welfare spending, some of them not really consistent with others, but welfare spending is easily over $1T per year.

I would absolutely be in favor of adding more (higher) marginal tax brackets to help with any further shortfall. That 1%er $34T cash hoard you mention is built through income, which can be taxed more. I'd also be in favor of a wealth tax. Top 1% is probably too wide for something like that, but a sub-5% wealth tax (perhaps taxed progressively, as with income) even on the top 0.1% or 0.01% would likely net a big chunk of change that could be put to useful work, vs. sitting around in some management fund for someone's great-great-great-great-great grandchildren to spend, assuming we haven't collapsed our financial system by then.

> Despite the "U" in UBI, I would assume these $1k/month payments would phase out at a certain income level. Someone making $20k/month, perhaps even $10k/month, does not need their basic needs propped up.

Rather than phased out the idea is usually that everyone gets exactly the same UBI (thus removing overhead and friction associated with existing welfare schemes) but it is cancelled out for the wealthy by an additional/increased regressive income tax.

The GDP per capita in the US is over $60000USD. 20% of that is a rather large chunk to directly redistribute to the workers, but is it an impossible amount? The effects of UBI on how we live our lives would probably be quite enormous and it's (to me, as a comp sci person) difficult to ascertain what its effects would be.

Yes, that’s enormous and you’re forgetting that a huge chunk of that already is income. You mentioned GDP in an effort to downplay the the enormity of the size. That’s every transaction for a good or service. That means to pay for this, not only would there be an extra 20% on income tax for everyone, but there would be a 20% federal sales tax on everything (including homes, surgeries, tuition, etc).

“Redistribute from workers” is a cutesy way to make it sound like it’s just coming from some excess cache reserve. No such reserve exists. For the numbers to work out, this needs to come from the middle class’s income as well as the rich. There isn’t enough wealth, let alone income, at the 1% level to even scratch the surface on these proposals.

>You mentioned GDP in an effort to downplay the the enormity of the size

No, actually I mentioned it because I thought you skipped out on the fact that money isn't a static amount which we drain out with UBI in this quote:

>To put that in context, the top 1% have an aggregate wealth in the US of about 34 trillion. So we could take all of the net worth from doctors, lawyers, business owners, CEOs, FAANG employees, etc and pay for this for about 10 years.

So I wanted to have a different measurement which took how much we produce into account.

But thanks for assuming I'm arguing in bad faith, lol.

> No, actually I mentioned it because I thought you skipped out on the fact that money isn't a static amount which we drain out with UBI in this quote:

You can’t print your way to GDP. If you’re suggesting the government just issue the extra money without funding it, you’re just diluting everyone’s existing money because you haven’t increased the production of the economy. Constant issuance of amounts this big needs to be funded or the massive amount of demand for the same fixed amount of goods and services will just cause hyper inflation.

And if you’re arguing that giving people UBI will make them work more and not less (enough to account for the GDP loss), that’s a pretty extraordinary claim that hasn’t been backed up by any ongoing UBI experiments.

> But thanks for assuming I'm arguing in bad faith, lol.

I’m not. I’m pointing out the incredible road block for UBI and you’re refusing to address it. It would fundamentally alter the economy to become the highest taxed of any first world countries and we would have the largest monetary entitlements per capita ever. Nothing like this has ever worked, none of the communist/socialist states (even at their peaks) gave out this much in income.

People who are against UBI are concerned with that. It has nothing to do with lack of empathy.

The problem with UBI is that it’s not solving a particular problem so there are no efficiencies to be gained. Like if we wanted to solve housing, we could have the Army go out and build houses at scale and the per house costs could be quite low. No such economies of scale come into play with UBI.

You’ll find more support for federal government built housing and federal government provide food than you will for UBI when the reality sinks in of what you’re asking the middle class to sacrifice.

The money doesn’t disappear, it goes back into the economy. People use it to buy things they need. Most sane people outside of the 1% don’t just pathologically hoard wealth and jerk off to it.

That doesn’t help. If you don’t fund it you’ve just increased money supply without increasing the goods and services available. In fact, if UBI serves its purpose, a bunch of people will quit their jobs and the supply of goods and services will decline.

BTW, people in the 1% don’t hoard money, that’s a... financially stupid thing to do. They buy shares in companies and other assets. So there is a lot less money supply trapped up in wealthy peoples’ banks than you would think.

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