Hacker News Reader

Comment by remote_phone | Hacker News Reader

I was a huge proponent of Andrew Yang and UBI. I was skeptical but thought why not, let’s try. I thought all it would do is create inflation but I was willing to try because the way things are going right now is clearly not working.

After the pandemic distributing so much money to so many people, I think my initial thoughts were right. All we saw is inflation after 2 years of essentially UBI. I think it doesn’t work and we need a better idea.

That said, I still support Andrew Yang and the Forward Party.

View on HN

> All we saw is inflation after 2 years of essentially UBI.

Whatever happened during pandemic was nowhere near UBI. For one, it was not universal. Second, it was temporary and very volatile, not something one could plan around.

And yet people didn’t take advantage of it and instead quit and farted around with the money. Not everyone of course, for many people it was critical but also for many it was a reason to quit and fart around and not follow their hearts to art or hobbies or something else productive as some UBI proponents predicted very hopefully.

A benefit that had an anticipated end date of within a year is, as the previous poster stated, too volatile. It was treated as a temporary windfall instead of a new reality that could be relied on and planned around

How much money do you think people got? Most people got around $2k over a two years. How is $1k/yr enough to quit a job and “fart around” with the money?

>instead quit and farted around with the money.

Citation needed. You read too much reddit.

There were record high # of businesses being created during the pandemic. There's anecdotes that it is because they had the opportunity to do so now with some extra cash + time off.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/business/startup-business... https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072057249/new-business-appli...

I had also seen some articles (citation needed!) that part of the employee crunch low-wage businesses are feeling is due to employees in those jobs taking their covid-money+time and training/interviewing/applying for office jobs.

I don't think we have a measure on how many people got to pursue their hobbies (rather than 'farting around'), though I'm not sure it matters. UBI proponents don't think that all people will do something 'valuable' though, just that it will be a net positive.

Right, it was just the monitary handouts of a few thousands of dollars to individuals that caused this problem and not the near zero percent interest rates....

> All we saw is inflation after 2 years of essentially UBI

I mean, it's difficult to prove the counterfactual, but we had a pretty substantial economic meltdown that could have had a far more drastic effect on poverty rates, and which we recovered from very quickly.

One could argue that it caused inflation; one could also argue that the inflation we saw was the build-up of 15 years of monetary policy detonated by a crisis.

Inflation is too much money for not enough goods. In a longer game, we should see production realign to produce enough goods and services for the people who need them.

We currently have a system where most people have unmet needs sure to lack of funds to meet them, while massive quantities of cash chase around investment drama rather than producing passive change in people's lives. We need to realign production for people, and we ultimately do that by being willing to give people money. It worked in the fifties, after all...

I dunno what your expenses look like, but for most people, the couple thousand bucks of stimulus that the government reluctantly squeaked out, plus some half-assed extension of unemployment benefits, is a hell of a long way from two years of UBI. Tons of the "paycheck protection plan" money went straight into the pockets of business owners rather than people who were barely scraping by even before the pandemic.

I mean the distribution of that money was upward. It's not like the wages were fixed or anything, or housing or any of that.

The United States shouldn't even start with an approach like UBI. Universal health coverage should be the first. It's one of the basic tenets of civilization, not to mention that it costs literally half.

I concur with a basic level of universal health coverage, proactive basic coverage.

I would not expand the definition of basic to cover any cosmetic and or elective procedures. And also not to introduce definition creep.

We’d have to allow for some definition creep, effectively freeze healthcare innovation, or let the basic level of healthcare fall to below basic after years of improvements and new drugs

So I think the state owes its citizens some modicum of health insurance, but it's not there to provide for non-basic health care --that which keeps a bell-curve fitting person in reasonable health for a reasonable amount of time (to be some independent health-body defined arbitrary time). Anything more should be up to complementary insurance of some sort or another.

It may come to be that like cars, all cars even the basic ones upgrade their Window hand-cranks to automatic. However, that should come from an economic feasibility point of view rather than 60% of voters/deciders say they want it.

Supporting people staying healthy, preventing diseases is a whole lot cheaper eventually. The idea behind universal health care is that you don't want to be overly stringent because it comes back to you down the line with vengeance. In my country for example you are recommended to visit the dentist at least once a year because prevention is important, and society can't exactly function well with people having bad teeth. Equal chances and all that, but also to avoid the cost down the line. In the United States however nobody cares, there isn't even a society, just a bunch of different classes living very different lives. If you can't afford good teeth you don't matter. You are not good enough. Problem solved. Good luck making it with your bad teeth. That's your problem, why should I pay for it. It's funny when people who call themselves Christians say this when Christianity is about realizing the eventual spiraling cost of not landing a hand to people, although this practicality evolved into morals over the ages. In the United States however there is a deep cultural problem, a lack of practical morality if you will, and that's not going to be easily solved.

I don't think we disagree that having a healthy population is good for a functional society. This requires preventive and maintenance healthcare "needs" --but would not include "wants" like cosmetic and elective options. If your eyelid droops but you can see well, I don't think that's necessary. If your hair is falling out and you want implants, if your mammaries are small or drooping I don't think elective options are necessary. We need to keep people healthy, we do not need to keep them attractive. So for Example I would not include "ED" --that's independent of health.

improved treatment for an existing ailment or condition should be considered covered under universal healthcare coverage.

I think it's cosmetic surgery or non-health-threatening treatments that would not be covered.

There's a question to be asked here though: would treatments such as laser eye surgery, where the condition being treated _already_ has an existing, cheaper treatment, be considered covered?

It's not the checks that caused the inflation, it was the Fed increasing the money supply by 45% over 2 years.

I really feel like there were excellent elements from the checks, and that a lot of the problems stemmed from rates being hard-locked at 0% greedily even as the market very obviously seemed to be headed towards a crash with how hot things were running.

I kept looking for articles talking about the possibility of a crash, and it felt like the sentiment of the 2001 crash or so -- "it's not possible this time", "there's no way", etc. It felt like... insanity.

I think that combined with other market issues added to inflation. I am not a financial expert, but I do like the idea of UBI for a few reasons (and hopefully it's sound in practice). Theoretically I believe it's like a resistor on the upper explosive growth of exponential mega-scale capitalism, which sort of needs that end of the scale and buffs the early game for most of us little one-or-twosie groups that aren't megascaled like that.

Covering a month or two of rent is not in any way UBI.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com