Is a Universal Basic Income System Even Possible?
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
No, it won’t, and no, they won’t. I’m sure this view helps Sam sleep at night but based on all of human history, the rich and powerful will use AI to suck as much life out of the poor and powerless as possible.
AI has an open goal on office workers with little client contact, but it requires serious leaps in robotics to take physical jobs from people.
1) It can’t be enough to desirably live on. It must essentially be “survival level” so that there is still an incentive to contribute to society with your work. Unlike unemployment, this means that if you get a job you just make more money rather than trade unemployment for a paycheck.
2) You have to strictly prevent increases due to inflation or inflation will spiral further out of control than it already is, perpetually increasing the UBI to accommodate the increases in costs for everything leading to a death spiral for the currency. Otherwise, it is impossible.
3) You must reduce all other benefit programs by the amount of the UBI to help pay for it.
4) It can only be done in a way that most people will be paying it back with reasonable income levels or it will be a perpetual drain.
“Must” feels strong here — particularly for any country that under-taxes their wealthiest citizens and spends wildly on defense.
such a bizarre position to take. "we could build a basic if functional utopia, but I'm worried about the work ethic of other people and how they have fun so instead I will insist that it fucking sucks".
why are you like this?
why do you:
1) care? 2) assume other people will just smoke bongs all day? 3) care if they do smoke bongs instead of doing something you find valuable?
how much oversight of the worthiness of how you spend your time and how you should be rewarded am I permitted right now?
You cannot have a UBI if it incentives the majority of people to not work in some capacity because the system will naturally fall apart.
In a world where AI takes jobs, couldn't they also take on the responsibility of taxes? All the top dogs from OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, etc. keep talking about the ridiculous value that AI could provide. Trillions of dollars.
I'm no economist, but here's a naive suggestion: make the robots pay taxes. If AI turns out to be as incredible as they're hyping it up to be, then every company on earth will be paying some big AI company for its services. Instead of letting OpenAI and others hoard all this money, take a cut of their insanely high revenue to pay for UBI.
... As I said, I'm not an economist - I suspect there's a serious flaw in my suggestion but I don't know what I don't know. I'd appreciate any rebuttals.
If it’s all going to a bunch of really wealthy people then the it will be focused on the types of assets that they would spend money on (businesses, yachts, whatever).
No matter the supply of money, there’s a limited supply of everything else.
Given that increase in demand, I'm curious how UBI would affect the supply side. My first thought is that it would negatively impact supply since there would be less efficient allocation of people to supply-related jobs. Unless I'm off here, I struggle to see how increased demand and decreased supply wouldn't impact inflation.
We're rapidly approaching the situation where 10 factory workers can be replaced by a single worker supervising some robots.
At some point the decrease in employment will not significantly impact productivity for a large sector of the market.
A properly implemented UBI scheme will be significant enough to allow a large part of the population to seriously reduce their income, either by working way less, or not working at all. Only that way can the amount of dollars in the economy stay relatively the same.
I think therefore the assumption that supply would diminish while demand increases is wrong.
However your argument seems to stem from "if we give it to everyone and cut nothing where does the money come from". Well, a part of it comes from all the welfare programs it replaces (OAS, Ontario Works, etc) and a huge amount of it doesn't really exist (since for the vast number of people you'll tax back 100% of it anyway).
For the amount that's left, yes, one needs to choose a funding strategy. A real policy play with all the data available would have the needed numbers to begin to decide what that looks like
Elsethread I wrote:
>> Secondly, you have to be prepared to let people starve to death in the streets. If that non-insignificant chunk of people who have gambling/alcohol/sex/drug addictions blow their entire income on the first day of the month on slots/booze/prostitutes/drugs, any funds you set aside for them means that what you have is UBI + existing welfare, not UBI instead of existing welfare.
Are you willing to let people starve to death?
How is this any different from how things work now? “UBI”, to me, and in a society where work is largely a non-human task, needs to encompass housing, food, etc. In a world where jobs don’t exist in the way they do now, UBI needs to be a stop gap while we completely overhaul what it means to have an _economy_.
> How is this any different from how things work now?
Now there are specific (and often means-tested) welfare benefits available to people. Replacing all of those benefits with a single (non-means-tested) cash payment because:
>>> Any sane UBI replaces most, if not all, other benefit programs.
means you have to be ready to let other people die for your principles.
I am not suggesting the elimination of food banks I suppose, which one might consider a benefit program, though usually not government operated.
> 3) You must reduce all other benefit programs by the amount of the UBI to help pay for it.
This isn't a caveat. A caveat is "something that is possible". This is about as possible as asking a human to flap their arms and levitate as a result of that flapping.
Firstly, there is no way, on this earth, that you are going to convince the population that a healthy young male who wants to only play videogames gets exactly the same amount as a crippled mother who is unable to work.
Secondly, you have to be prepared to let people starve to death in the streets. If that non-insignificant chunk of people who have gambling/alcohol/sex/drug addictions blow their entire income on the first day of the month on slots/booze/prostitutes/drugs, any funds you set aside for them means that what you have is UBI + existing welfare, not UBI instead of existing welfare.
I said reduce, not replace. If you get $800 / month in UBI and $5,000 / month for disability (crippled mother example) then you would reduce disability by $800. There would be no change to the benefit for the crippled mother who is still getting $5,000 / month ($4,200 from disability and $800 from UBI).
I mean, using "reduce" to mean "lower existing welfare payouts (not costs) by enough to allow UBI welfare" is very different to how UBI proposals normally mean "reduce".
There is a need for something, but UBI as it is currently being proposed by world+dog is not that thing.
I think your argument might be the first one that I've seen that doesn't use "reduce" to mean "almost eliminate".
By taking out the first $800 from every other benefit program you will eliminate the vast majority of their usage as well which will shrink them enough that they can be safely reformed if need be.
I think you're mistaken on some parts. The problem that UBI is trying to solve is that we're quickly approaching a situation where we don't need people to 'contribute to society with their work' anymore.
On some basic level the economy works because companies produce products and services and the consumer pays for those products and services.
Currently the consumer side is in large part financed by wages.
This means that a large part of the economy is dependent on a large part of the consumers being employed.
This will be a problem when there is a very high possibility of mass unemployment when advances in AI will make most jobs obsolete.
The solution is to decouple the consumer income from employment, through something like UBI. This allows people that are jobless to still contribute to the economy and keep (local) businesses alive.
For this to work UBI actually does need to be able to provide a comfortable (desirable) life. This doesn't mean luxury, but it should allow someone to have a house, buy groceries, visit friends and family, use (public) transport, go on a 2 week (national) vacation every year, save a little bit.
If the UBI is not enough to provide a comfortable life, people will still need to work which doesn't solve the problem.
I think making the UBI low enough that most people will still work is exactly what would cause inflation. If the UBI replaces wage, the amount of money in circulation wouldn't change, so no inflationary pressure. If people keep working but get an extra UBI on top, the amount of currency would greatly increase thus lead to inflation.
Personally I think we all should just accept that if we allow people to truly choose what they want to do, some of them will choose to do nothing. But in general people are productive creatures, and most if not all, have some limit to the time they don't want to do anything. Besides that UBI would be a great incentive for people to start their own business, volunteering, or doing valuable things that are inherently unprofitable
We've been here a few times. Not with AI, but with the agricultural revolution (hunting and gathering became almost obsolete), the industrial revolution (physical force became almost obsolete, if it was not needed in conjunction with intelligence), the computer revolution (tedious data processing became obsolete), the internet (messengers and mail, as well as local businesses became almost obsolete)...
Every time, large swaths of human work were made nigh-obsolete, but societal progress needed people to find other niches to work in to expand our societal wealth. If everybody just laid down their work and didn't look for anything new, some other civilization would have taken over, because somebody there would.
>UBI. This allows people that are jobless to still contribute to the economy and keep (local) businesses alive.
If the money they use is not backed by value production it will make everything more expensive, since the purchasing power of that currency depends on less value. Local business will be the last to be kept alive, because UBI will need to be lower than working wages to motivate others to continue working whose work is still needed. Local businesses have the habit of being more expensive. UBI receivers will be the last people able to afford that luxury.
>I think making the UBI low enough that most people will still work is exactly what would cause inflation.
Why? The more people work, the more value is being produced by this society, the less inflation there should be, due to costs being lower.
>If the UBI replaces wage, the amount of money in circulation wouldn't change, so no inflationary pressure.
But nobody worked for this money, since it's a redistribution it will have inflationary effects. Because there's the same amount of money, with less things to buy for it.
I used to think like that, but it too is fundamentally unfair. It is a recognition that there must exist an underclass of people that will be coerced into work else they will be kept at "survival level".
I think that if someone had a regular income to pay for their basic needs there is no way they would just sit around drinking beer and smoking weed all day. Most people are driven to better themselves.
I do hate the haters who wrongly think that living on any benefit is living a life of luxury. I challenge all of thenm to try and successfuly live a full and productive life on £70 a week. Impossible.
Even people on benefits contribute to society.
Every penny of the meagre benefits they get and spend on survival still goes towards some business profit margin.
All benefits here on Airstrip One work on a sliding scale so those 18 year olds do not get the same amount as the disabled person because the disabled person gets twice as much to live on as well as other benefits to support them.
In 2023-24, the government is expected to spend £265.5bn on paying pensions and benefits.
just over half of which (£134.8bn) goes on benefits to pensioners.
All pensioners that is, even those living in £2,000,000 properties and recieving huge personal pensions. yes they still get the state pension too. I personally think the state pension should be stripped from those pensioners.
The Standard allowance
You’ll get one standard allowance for your household every month.
If you’re single and under 25--------£311.68
If you’re single and 25 or over------£393.45
If you live with your partner and you’re both under 25-----£489.23 (for you both)
If you live with your partner and either of you are 25 or over-----£617.60 (for you both)
If you are under 25 and live with your parents, money will be deducted from your benefits to pay a share of your parents rent.
People are currently not allowed to work while claiming benefits which inevitably leaves them in the benefit trap from which there is no escape.
This is where UBI would work for all people, everyone would be allowed to work and receive UBI.
A win win for the people and for society as far as I am concerned.
Formally a society is built to serve their people, so it's a duty of a society assuring a minimum living standard as much as possible to anyone, if that's possible is not a matter of money but natural resources, skills to profit from them etc. How to ensure such living standard to anyone and where the bar of "the minimum" is set it's a whole topic and have not much to do with money.
Remember however a thing: most poor tend to remain poor because they do not know how to administer their life BUT they can still live better with a bit of revenue and what go though their "holed hands" fall in someone else pocket, meaning it still makes the economy turning, so there is NO ISSUE in having a UBI for all, unconditionally, also to the richest, with just few spending rules (like you can save money from it, but not more than a certain amount, you can spend it but only domestically) because the money goes from those who receive them to the local activities, spent in food, medicine, play and so on.
The real point is how can an economy have private money, created out of thin air by some who "rent it" to the government as de-facto dictators. And my answer is there is no economy able to survive much in such system, deep crises and wars are natural in such systems.
I don't get it.
On other side basically nearly all of UBI will be spend, thus generate economic activity and come back in taxes in various ways such as sale or income or corporate.
By that rationale, can the government hire $2-3 trillion of teachers, cops and college professors for only $539 billion?
UBI replaces the standard deduction, or something like that. Everyone pays tax, at either flat or progressive rates, but with the base tax on $0 income being -$10,000/person.
So if you hypothetically imagine a 20% flat tax (not a realistic number!), then once you're making $50,000 a year, you're breaking even. At that point, UBI is nominally costing the government $10,000/American/year, but most of that is an accounting fiction--it's just equivalent to not taxing that person as much as you would've in an alternate scenario.
Now, I don't know how this works for Wilderquist's example, since I doubt that simulation has UBI replacing all other taxes/deductions.
Perhaps possible, but coupled with other extreme changes made for "fair" treatmenet.
Probably yes.
In practice, and at the behest of "AI titans" - who have NO at-scale experience with economic policy or political leadership?
Zero chance in hell.
- whites without a college degree benefit most from anti-poverty programs
- and ACA
Among the 65-and-older group, who receive social security, non-whites represent 1/3, then 1/4, then 1/5 as you ascend by decade.
It’s possible non-college whites, as a bloc, don’t know this. Put another way, if UBI redistributes those programs, they might gain some awareness of their best interests. Or, UBI could be phrased in a way that convinces them it hurts the right people instead of them.
What is the base-rate here though? Is it vastly different than for the general population? Otherwise this sounds like a base-rate fallacy, to say anybody is "benefitting more".
Social security will remain solvent until 2034, which is the first year Gen-X will start retiring. The age bracket for people who are now 48 is closest to 50/50 white. When they retire, in 2041, the entire nation will coincidentally pass 50/50. I think those stats are enough for the GOP to abandon social security in the long term.
[0] The Social Security Administration https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/projections/populations.html...
[1] Pew https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/07/30/most-comm...
[2] The Atlantic, 2018 https://archive.ph/EZ3ds
Private companies will proliferate with conveniently hard to calculate value.
The relationship between land and rent will only intensify.
But to me, the best way would be a tax on corporations in an inverse manner compared to CEO Pay. The higher the ratio, the higher the tax
For example something like this. Take the ave salary of bottom 10% of wage earners in the company, excluding over time. Compare that to the CEO or the ave of upper management salary, including bonuses and all other non monetary compensation. Use the higher value.
Then tax the company full revenue before all deductions at the percent of the ratio difference. You will see things change quickly. This tax will apply to companies outside of the US too.
For people without work, there should be $ left over for them.
Just look at the consequences of the COVID payments and imagine that on an even larger scale.
This is what I see daily. Is it any wonder I have a dim view of Conservatives?
I'm aware that things are horrible in North Korea and other places. Doesn't mean I have to be happy with people where I live, though. "Suck it up, buttercup" is not a survivable philosophy.
Can you name the person and link to their speech? I'll be happy to spread it around and have such person shamed.
>> On a daily basis, I am among people who fantasize about killing liberals, or anyone perceived as liberal, indiscriminately (also LGBTQ, or insufficiently religious).
A liberal just shot at a presidential candidate recently.
>> Rather than actually try to solve the problem of homelessness, they just want them to magically "go away", or die (they don't seem to be too concerned about which one).
I'm pretty sure none of the democrat run places ever solved this problem.
>> This is what I see daily. Is it any wonder I have a dim view of Conservatives?
There are endless streams of liberals protesting, destroying property, arsoning and attacking people of different convictions and I still don't think liberals are bad people.
In 2023, some 60-ish billion euro has been evaded. No government has ever tried to rectify this gaping chasm as that would be a political suicide.
On top of this, should I pay even more to keep afloat those that do no not want to work? Fuck that. Forget it.
Where to take the money UBI needs from is a huge issue as well.
So roughly 4,000,000,000,000 in new spending per year just to start. Obviously none of this would come from existing revenues. Which is incidentally very similar to the 2020 spending; which caused ~6% inflation.
Will that $1000/month be inflation adjusted? If not, in 10 years that will be the equivalent of setting it to $500.
If it is inflation adjusted, then it will be at ~1700/year.
Roughly 5,600,000,000,000is the new price. That's assuming no politicians for 10 years and multiple elections dont say they'll be increasing it.
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." by Benjamin Franklin
Tyson Foods didn't grow their margin by 4% by paying their suppliers more, you grow your margin by charging more in excess of what you pay your suppliers [2].
[1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-the...
[2]: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tyson-foods/operating-margin/
[3]: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/drivers-sue-us-shal...