[HN Gopher] Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the c...
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Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic
income
Author : imartin2k
Score : 294 points
Date : 2020-05-21 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.yahoo.com)
| exabrial wrote:
| Which is incredibly charitable! Opponents to UBI only oppose the
| income source being tax; which is a forced wealth transfer
| (opposite of my money my choice).
| MiroF wrote:
| > opposite of my money my choice
|
| you cite this as if it's some commonly accepted moral principle
| luckylion wrote:
| Money is just a placeholder for value produced. You usually
| produce value by doing something with your brain and body.
| "My money = my choice" is essentially "my body = my choice".
| MiroF wrote:
| I don't feel like spending my time debating libertarians,
| but just know that the little old "my body is my own means
| I have complete control over all wealth and taxation is
| never justified" syllogism is far from unassailable or
| widely accepted.
| luckylion wrote:
| I'm not a libertarian, but I generally agree with "my
| body = my choice".
|
| I don't mind taxes in general (if fair and reasonable,
| which I don't think the taxes in my country are), but the
| general principle still applies and coming out against it
| does sound weird to me. Taxes are a necessary evil to
| have a society, but I don't think starting from a
| position of "you should not have control over your body"
| is going to lead to models of societies that I'd like to
| live in. And again, you can remove the money part
| completely, it's just easier to use money than barter for
| everything.
| MiroF wrote:
| > "you should not have control over your body"
|
| That's not the part of the syllogism most people take
| issue with, you're being disingenuous. If fair and
| reasonable taxes are okay, then it seems like you aren't
| intrinsically entitled to all wealth that flows from your
| body, so then it seems like if the reasons for UBI are
| compelling enough, a taxation system to fund it would be
| justified.
|
| It also seems unclear why you should be naturally
| entitled to all your wealth, because you don't produce
| wealth in a vacuum, but rather as part of a system of
| social cooperation - that is what determines what you are
| entitled to. Then, it seems like we should start with
| what the rules of a reasonable system of social
| cooperation ought to be, rather than starting from self-
| ownership. That's a sketch of a potential response to
| your syllogism.
|
| It seems equally silly to me to structure society so that
| just because you happened to be born into poverty, your
| life choices are substantially constrained due to no
| choice of your own.
| luckylion wrote:
| As I said, I'm not a libertarian. I'm fine with fair and
| reasonable taxes, you pay those in return for something
| else, but I'm generally against approaching it the other
| way round, as in "you might be allowed to keep some of
| the fruits of your labor, but they actually belong to the
| state/tribe/party/volk".
|
| You're not getting "all your wealth", the market prices
| in a difference in what you make and what it's worth for
| others. But generally in that line of thinking, you could
| just as easily ask why you should be entitled to _any_ of
| your wealth, since you 're not in a vacuum and you
| wouldn't have any of it if you weren't part of the
| system.
|
| I think it's primarily a question of whether you consider
| the individual as an agent or a cog in the agent that is
| society. I prefer the idea of individual agency, with all
| the issues it carries.
|
| > rather than starting from self-ownership
|
| Without being free, you cannot agree to any rules. And
| you can also not be allowed to leave if you don't want to
| live in that specific system of social cooperation.
|
| > It seems equally silly to me to structure society so
| that just because you happened to be born into poverty,
| your life choices are substantially constrained due to no
| choice of your own.
|
| Oh, sure, the luck of the draw is a major issue. I don't
| think making everyone a slave is the answer though. And I
| do believe there's a good reason to organize society so
| nobody is born into poverty: it's more efficient. Having
| millions of people sit around and not contribute is a
| waste, both of their time, energy and mind, and of the
| resources they need. I don't think just increasingly
| overtaxing those that do contribute is the answer though.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| No. We oppose it because its a back door to communism.
|
| Once 51% of people can vote themselves their own pay, what
| makes you believe they wont vote themselves any type of
| increase they want.
|
| Mob rule is a step closer to tyranny and this is is.
|
| The tyranny of the 51%
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I'm a leftist person who isn't an opponent of ubi, but is an
| opponent of Yang's ubi. I have no problem with raising taxes,
| but I do have other concerns.
|
| Namely, if everyone got $x,xxx a month, how do we ensure that
| rents don't just go up by that amount or wages don't go down by
| that amount? I worry that without a well thought out plan, UBI
| just ends up funneling money directly back to the wealthy (eg,
| landlords and business owners).
|
| I'm not convinced yet that Yang has a thorough enough plan
| here.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Do you believe welfare is similar in that regard? If not,
| why?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| No. Healthy public housing, universal healthcare, free
| public transit don't have the same ability for the benefits
| to be converted to income for a landlord.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| I think any situation where you know that payment is
| guaranteed there is the potential for profiteering.
|
| In universal healthcare, insurance knows the government
| will foot the bill and can tack on a little more.
|
| In my experience this is the case when dealing with large
| entities. This is slightly the case with government
| contracts. They are a cash cow of sorts.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Yeah the best solution is that we, as in our local
| governments, should be our own landlords and own more of the
| property that we rent out. Not just housing for the poor, but
| for every spectrum of wealth. If rental housing is such a
| good investment, then let's get in on it ourselves.
| Passthepeas wrote:
| so by that logic, if we took money away from people the rent
| would go down? The answer is yes, it probably would, but not
| enough to negate the effect of the wealth change. With a UBI
| of $1,000 I would expect rent might go up in some areas by
| maybe up to a few hundred but this idea that rent would
| somehow skyrocket to the point that it would nullify any
| benefit seems a ridiculous assertion to me.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| What forces would stop landlords capturing a large part of
| this money?
| ethanbond wrote:
| Nothing.
|
| Landlords regularly capture upside from social, economic,
| or technological improvements. Cue conversation on the
| actual remedy to rampant wealth inequality,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
| dang wrote:
| What's Yang's answer about that? If he had a FAQ that would
| certainly be on it.
| gist wrote:
| As a landlord [1] I can answer that question. Btw, I have
| not found any UBI proponent addressing it either (they tend
| to avoid that with economic speak if at all) [2]
|
| Rent will go up. All you have to do is look what happens in
| 'hot' markets (SFO/NYC/Bay Area) where there are so many
| dollars floating around.
|
| [1] Both commercial and residential but not in a hot market
| a 'normal' market.
|
| [2] Including Yang
| [deleted]
| ethanbond wrote:
| People are actually downvoting the idea that rents will
| rise as high as the market allows? Hilarious.
|
| Rent rises when: there are high paying jobs around (SF,
| NYC); there is public investment (subway stations,
| schools, parks); or, yes, when everyone stumbles across
| an extra $1k/month (UBI).
|
| All of these mean "the market" (aka tenants) is able to
| pay a higher price, therefore landlords raise their
| prices and capture it.
| starpilot wrote:
| By how much? Do you assume that the full UBI amount will
| be available for tenants to pay rent, and that no other
| prices will increase? I imagine that landlords in
| aggregate would understand that it would not be in their
| benefit to raise all rents by an amount equal to the UBI
| if they want to keep tenants.
|
| Yang's campaign estimated that prices would go up about
| 12%, so for higher income (like many on HN) this would be
| net decrease in spending power. For someone in poverty,
| going from $12k to $24k per year, this could be life
| changing.
| jlokier wrote:
| I think rents and other costs will rise to the
| equilibrium point where a lot of people are stressed by
| the price but just about able to pay it.
|
| Same as now.
|
| It's not a coincidence that the cost of living is equal
| to the amount which lots of people struggle with, yet are
| just about coping with.
|
| However, a key benefit of UBI is that the situation is
| stable and predictable for people on it. Currently,
| people who are just about coping are _living in constant
| low-level fear_ that their circumstances will change for
| the worse. For people who would have to turn to
| government support, a legitimate fear is not knowing what
| claims will be allowed, or being asked difficult
| questions about lifestyle for which there is no safe,
| honest answer.
|
| That fear has a lot of consequences. For example measured
| IQ is lowered in that state. People do not make the best
| decisions; they can't. They are sicker too. They can't
| make plans. They can't make investments in their own
| future.
|
| UBI addresses this uncertainty and fear, even if the
| markets react so nobody (on average) is better off
| compared with basic costs of living such as rent and
| food. And so it makes life better.
| ethanbond wrote:
| You agree that UBI will not fix poverty and/or wealth
| inequality, as cost of living will rise exactly to the
| level necessary to guarantee "slight poverty," but are
| still a proponent?
|
| I would be interested to see evidence that it's the
| welfare system _itself_ that causes these stressors,
| rather than the _poverty_ itself, which is what you seem
| to be stating here. Why would that be the case?
| macspoofing wrote:
| >how do we ensure that rents don't just go up by that amount
| or wages don't go down by that amount?
|
| Two ways to answer this:
|
| 1) If you're printing money, then yes, prices will rise, and
| if price controls are implemented it will lead to shortages
| (e.g. Venezuela)
|
| 2) If you're not printing money, then competition will simply
| lower the cost. It's the same as today - outside of terrible
| policies like rent-control, why don't landlords just raise
| rents by $5000? Because the renters will leave and rent from
| a landlord that undercuts the crazy landlord. In the market,
| profits tend to 0 and if profits are too high more supply
| will come in to get a cut of the profits. It's not magic.
|
| >BI just ends up funneling money directly back to the wealthy
| (eg, landlords and business owners).
|
| Your view on reality is skewed. I mean, yes, people will buy
| products and services from landlords and business owners.
| That's not 'funnelling money' anywhere, that's just buying
| products and services. What do you think people will do with
| that money, if not to buy things they want and/or need.
|
| >I'm not convinced yet that Yang has a thorough enough plan
| here.
|
| For sure. UBI does not solve anything and is unworkable, but
| not for the reasons you stated.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| You have a lot more faith in markets than I do. I don't
| believe that we've been particularly well served by the
| housing or health care markets. It's been demonstrated,
| again and again, that 'more supply will come in' just isn't
| working for housing.
|
| I think we fundamentally disagree, though, which is ok. I
| see rent control as one mechanism to attempt to decommodify
| housing (which I'm strongly in favor of). I'm not sure
| we're going to find much common ground via internet forum.
| daenz wrote:
| >how do we ensure that rents don't just go up by that amount
| or wages don't go down by that amount
|
| That's a feature of the plan. Rents will go up, and wages
| will go down, but by that point, people will be committed to
| UBI, and the only solution will be the gov to step in and
| control the prices.
| meddlepal wrote:
| > will be the gov to step in and control the prices.
|
| Because that will work out so well.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I don't understand the optimism around UBI. UBI is a band-aid and
| a sign that a system is actually failing. I get why some people,
| especially intellectuals, want UBI, but they seem to believe that
| UBI is free of consequence. If society "needs" UBI, that means
| that not enough people can build wealth or that the welfare
| system isn't effective. Handing people money isn't going to
| change the fact that too much of the economy is bolstered by
| massive amounts of debt. UBI may just perpetuate the problem and
| encourage more debt to be taken out. One argument for UBI I've
| heard is that places like Alaska give their residents a
| "dividend" of something between a few hundred to a few thousand
| bucks. But the reason Alaska can do this is because they
| effectively own their oil industry, and their GDP far exceeds
| their debt, whereas the United States federal government(as well
| as many states) have debt that exceeds their GDP.
|
| UBI will be needed when automation actually destroys enough jobs
| where it makes sense. I don't know that we're quite there yet,
| but it will happen soon. Wanting UBI before its time seems like
| an admission of failure oh the system.
| arcatech wrote:
| I don't think the argument is that society "needs" it, it's
| that it's a better system than the one we have now.
|
| I don't know much about the current proposals. In my head, it's
| an adjustment of the current economic system. Pay everyone
| money, provide jobs for anyone who wants more money, collect
| more taxes, remove redundant social services, etc. It seems
| like it could work better than what we have now so it sounds
| worthy of serious consideration.
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| The optimism comes from a desperate desire not to confront the
| need for universal healthcare or land reform.
|
| As long as real estate is an investment and health care has a
| middle man, UBI is just a subsidy for those sectors.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| Real estate can either be affordable or it can be an
| investment, but it can't be both.
|
| I think something similar applies with healthcare.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Yep UBI is more guaranteed money into the hands of rent
| seeking landlords and co.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Much like how government backed student loans turned into
| guaranteed money for tuition seeking educational
| institutions.
|
| People don't take into account that the value of money
| largely comes from the confidence that said money will have
| value in the future. If cash flow becomes guaranteed, the
| confidence that the business can demand more money from its
| customers goes up, ultimately lowering the value of said
| money for the customer while allowing the business to have
| greater investment opportunities.
|
| There's a bit of irony in that, since the value of the US
| dollar largely comes from the confidence in the guarantee
| that the government will honor the value of treasury notes.
| The Chinese Yuan is comparatively worth much less than the
| US dollar, not just because of the dominance of the US, but
| because the perception of China is that it is far more
| corrupt and not as reliable than the US in terms of paying
| back its lenders, lowering the confidence that exists for
| its currency.
|
| So I guess it comes down to this:
|
| Business confidence > Customer confidence = monetary value
| decreases
|
| Customer confidence > Business confidence = monetary value
| increases
| LAMike wrote:
| People can afford healthier food with more money.
|
| Real estate doesn't matter post C19 once office and schools
| are decentralized further each year.
| LAMike wrote:
| > because they effectively own their oil industry
|
| Why can't we, as a society, come together and take ownership of
| our data, and sell it back to the companies using our data for
| profit?
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| Or at the very least consider taxing those collecting it.
| Data for services is bartering.
| [deleted]
| ativzzz wrote:
| The companies that own our data subsidize their collection of
| it. In other words, we get to use Facebook, Google, etc for
| free, and we pay them with our data instead of with money.
|
| When you own land with oil, you need to buy/rent the
| equipment to drill it and deliver it. With data, all that is
| free for the end user.
|
| Now the real scam are companies that both charge you to use
| their product and then make money off the data they collect
| as a result.
| ricefield wrote:
| It's not really your data though, how can you control /
| monetize it?
| LAMike wrote:
| Are Google, Amazon and Facebook selling ads to robots?
|
| I'm pretty sure we are the product, not the customer.
|
| Think about what that means... advertisers spend money to
| get in front of people based on the data they think is
| important for their business, right?
|
| It's derived from all of our data, which we are not getting
| paid for. Do you think these companies would be worth
| trillions if they weren't profiting off data we give them
| for free?
| lukemichals wrote:
| Announced on
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/1xb2GYUPxoGAprDj3G4Idz?si=A...
|
| I've got to say, I've moved almost entirely to consuming
| information via podcasts and Yang Speaks is one of my top ones.
|
| 1. Find some smart people/organizations you trust 2. Listen to
| them daily
| MikeKusold wrote:
| You can also directly listen or subscribe to his podcast here:
| https://yangspeaks.com/
|
| I refuse to support what Spotify is trying to do to the podcast
| market.
| lukemichals wrote:
| > I refuse to support what Spotify is trying to do to the
| podcast market.
|
| What are they trying to do?
| karatestomp wrote:
| Replace a standard you can use with any client with...
| Spotify.
| macspoofing wrote:
| What is the actual case for Basic Income? I hear that it 'solves'
| the problem of automation ... except that it doesn't actually
| solve it AT ALL. If automation will lead to high unemployment,
| basic income will do nothing for that. It will send cash to
| people who aren't working so they can provide for basic
| necessities, but our welfare state already does that. And we know
| that segments of society that are wholly dependent on government
| suffer despair, drug/alcohol abuse and crime - UBI does nothing
| to solve that either.
|
| And of course, UBI in rich nations does nothing for the third
| world, which will be hit HARDER by automation and doesn't have
| the wealth to give every citizen cash.
|
| There are also major structural ambiguities with Basic Income
| that are glossed over by supporters, namely the libertarian-types
| think that it will replace the welfare state, and
| progressives/leftists AT BEST think that it will complement the
| welfare state (i.e. that segment will NOT allow UBI to replace
| any of their cherished social programs). So if UBI has any chance
| of broad support, it will not save a dime, but rather add a
| tremendous amount to government spending.
|
| In the end, UBI solves nothings and comes with its own set of
| baggage.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| For one, it removes pathological situations where people are
| disincentivised to work because it would mean they lose means-
| tested support.
|
| The great unknown is whether it also disincentivises work
| itself in a way that would be a negative overall.
|
| The general idea is that it removes the threat of poverty,
| which potentially allows people to make more rational
| decisions, and negates the need for cruder solutions like
| minimum wage, regulations, unions etc.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >it removes pathological situations where people are
| disincentivised to work because it would mean they lose
| means-tested support.
|
| That's a problem with how welfare is structured, that can be
| fixed with changing welfare.
|
| >The great unknown is whether it also disincentivises work
| itself in a way that would be a negative overall
|
| Why would you think it wouldn't?
|
| >which potentially allows people to make more rational
| decisions, and negates the need for cruder solutions like
| minimum wage, regulations, unions etc
|
| If you think you can get leftist/progressive support for UBI
| by cutting ANY social program, you are in for quite an
| awakening. Welfare state employes hundreds of thousands of
| people, they will not support UBI either. The libertarian
| view of UBI replacing social programs has ZERO chance of
| passing. So what's left is UBI being just another expense of
| top of the huge welfare state costs.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| > "That's a problem with how welfare is structured, that
| can be fixed with changing welfare."
|
| That's what UBI is...? UBI is changing welfare to not be
| means-tested.
|
| > "Why would you think it wouldn't?"
|
| There are many reasons to think it wouldn't. For example,
| lots of people work two jobs. People work full time when
| they could work part time. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos etc all
| still work. The vast majority of people in a modern economy
| work more than they need to in order to earn what a UBI
| would pay.
|
| The rest of your post is not relevant to the question you
| originally asked ("What is the actual case for Basic
| Income?")
| klmadfejno wrote:
| > There are many reasons to think it wouldn't. For
| example, lots of people work two jobs. People work full
| time when they could work part time. Bill Gates, Jeff
| Bezos etc all still work. The vast majority of people in
| a modern economy work more than they need to in order to
| earn what a UBI would pay.
|
| Bill Gates works, but he doesn't work as a janitor. Who
| is going to scrub the toilets for a meager supplement to
| a guaranteed living wage?
| bslyke wrote:
| Our welfare state has gaps where non-workers, who should be
| supported by welfare, are still getting screwed. I thought this
| paper on the subject was interesting:
| https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/01/20/how-to-fix-o...
|
| Seems like UBI fills in the gaps in a sloppy easy way, while
| also giving money to workers, who don't truly 'need' the
| welfare. It frees them from the chains of being stuck at their
| job, but universal healthcare would probably do a much better
| job at that for the worst-stuck people (e.g. hate my job but I
| have a chronic illness with monthly costs > a potential UBI).
|
| Maybe give welfare a cool silicon valley style name instead of
| the one with baggage and Jack Dorsey will get on-board.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Right, so you're in the second camp where UBI adds extra
| costs to the existing welfare state. So there are no savings.
|
| > It frees them from the chains of being stuck at their job
|
| Yes. It would be nice to get nice things and not worry about
| working. You can't get away from the underlying reality that
| jobs aren't fun but they still need to be done. Also, we know
| that populations that are wholly supported by government
| welfare with no incentive to work suffer from drug/alcohol
| abuse and crime.
| LAMike wrote:
| "What is the actual case for Basic Income?"
|
| Ending homelessness and providing a bigger safety net for the
| citizens of the richest country on earth, for starters.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > segments of society that are wholly dependent on government
| suffer despair, drug/alcohol abuse and crime
|
| Is there a causal relationship in the direction implied by this
| sentence?
|
| There's a correlation among unemployment, drug/alcohol abuse,
| depression, crime, homelessness, suicide, and probably several
| other negative things in society. It's hard to tease out the
| causal linkages, meaning that if something like UBI allows some
| people to quit their jobs, it's not clear that _that_ quitting
| would have the same correlation to depression /abuse/suicide as
| _today 's_ sources of joblessness do.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| "And we know that segments of society that are wholly dependent
| on government suffer despair, drug/alcohol abuse and crime."
|
| Citations please.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| UBI with a progressive tax is just welfare without the
| bureaucratic overhead. Even in countries where there already is
| a strong welfare state, I'd bet that UBI would be an
| improvement due to reducing the stress of applying for
| unemployment benefits.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >UBI with a progressive tax is just welfare without the
| bureaucratic overhead.
|
| Who says UBI replaces a single welfare program? Any support
| that UBI gets from the left is under the assumption that it
| is an ADD-ON to the existing welfare state. The people
| employed in the administration of the welfare programs will
| also fight tooth-and-nail from losing their jobs.
|
| So UBI is just another cost on top the mountain of costs.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Who gives a shit?
|
| Edit: apparently you can just buy the approval of people on this
| site. Plz advertise going rate of values in profile.
| clairity wrote:
| UBI is meant to be a gambit to distract us from seeing that the
| playing field is so heavily tilted against everyone but the very
| rich and fortunate. the rich buy this diversion by periodically
| sliding some pennies down to the rest of us on the other end,
| while patting themselves on the back for doing such a magnanimous
| thing.
|
| what we really need to do is bring transparency and fairness to
| labor markets, and squeeze rentiers and financiers, so that we
| can start to tilt that playing field back to where innovators can
| innovate in all sorts of directions, not just in the ones deigned
| to make the rich even richer.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the poverty
| problem in the US, I think almost any solution to poverty will
| fall prey to inflation if we don't address income inequality.
|
| One way to do this is pay ratio caps at companies. It's pretty
| hard to argue against this: if you really believe that wealth
| trickles down, then you should have no problem trusting but
| verifying that.
| ahdeanz wrote:
| This is a classic pre-distribution versus redistribution
| debate. I'd just note that they are not mutually exclusive
| strategies and can both be undertaken simultaneously.
|
| You can see Sweden has been able to do so but countries like
| US, France, Germany, UK all have similar levels of inequality
| before redistribution.
|
| The US inequality compared to those countries is primarily due
| to lack of redistribution:
|
| Around ~29 minute mark: https://youtu.be/DCUq5_ERDp8
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I'll just point out that I did not oppose undertaking both
| simultaneously.
| burrows wrote:
| > While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the
| poverty problem in the US, I think almost any solution to
| poverty will fall prey to inflation if we don't address income
| inequality.
|
| Please define the "poverty problem" in the US.
|
| How is an increase in the money supply related to income
| inequality?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Please define the "poverty problem" in the US.
|
| Ugh. That's way too complex, and you know it. But I'll try to
| give you some bullet points:
|
| 1. Homelessness 2. Inability to afford healthcare 3. Home
| ownership being inaccessible to most people 4. Inability to
| afford childcare 5. Inability to afford education
|
| Note how 1, 4, and 5 aren't solvable by providing jobs--these
| are problems that prevent you from entering the workforce
| even when jobs are available.
|
| Frankly, I don't think you're asking this question in good
| faith.
|
| > How is an increase in the money supply related to income
| inequality?
|
| If you implement UBI, you're essentially also implementing a
| minimum wage, since companies will have to pay significantly
| more than UBI. Rather than accept a cut in their own pay to
| pay workers more, executives will raise the price of goods
| and services. This effect, across the economy causes
| inflation. So if you don't find a way to prevent executives
| raising their own pay to maintain inequality, you get
| inflation any time you give money to the poor.
|
| Economic conservatives tend to overstate this problem, in my
| opinion--there's nothing preventing you from just raising the
| UBI proportional to inflation. But historically, minimum wage
| hasn't tracked inflation, and I worry that UBI would suffer
| the same problem.
| claudeganon wrote:
| > How is an increase in the money supply related to income
| inequality?
|
| Go read about whose asses were saved with printed the money
| during the 2008 financial crisis. Or the 7 trillion bailout
| fund for corporations that just passed.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _One way to do this is pay ratio caps at companies. It 's
| pretty hard to argue against this: if you really believe that
| wealth trickles down, then you should have no problem trusting
| but verifying that._
|
| That's not what trickle-down economics was ever about, to my
| understanding. But more importantly, a plan like you suggest
| would surely increase the user of contractors, rendering these
| the proposed pay ratio impotent.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Yes, there are loopholes that need to be closed. The same as
| any short description of a complex economic policy. I'm not
| sure why you think this problem is insurmountable: states
| already have regulations around who may be considered
| contractors.
| gnicholas wrote:
| States do have rules around considering individuals to be
| contractors. I don't know of any laws that do the same with
| regard to contracted companies -- for example, the company
| that employs the people who clean the bathrooms at FB. This
| seems much harder to overcome with regulations.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I don't see the connection between inflation and inequality.
| Inflation is relative currency growth vs true economy size and
| productivity.
|
| Pay ratio caps don't seem that productive in several ways. For
| one humans are tricky in that they don't just lie down and
| accept the laws you want that go against what they want and
| instead undermine and loophole it in ingenius ways. Trivially
| that would encourage "nesting doll tiered" subsidary companies
| and contractors to bypass the limits.
|
| Second the high end of income wouldn't even be affected as they
| make their money largely from investments not salary or wages.
| Even if they got the seed for investments from their high
| salaries - like every retired athlete who managed to stay rich
| and even get richer after endorsements dried up.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > I don't see the connection between inflation and
| inequality. Inflation is relative currency growth vs true
| economy size and productivity.
|
| If you implement UBI, you're essentially also implementing a
| minimum wage, since companies will have to pay significantly
| more than UBI. Rather than accept a cut in their own pay to
| pay workers more, executives will raise the price of goods
| and services. This effect, across the economy causes
| inflation. So if you don't find a way to prevent executives
| raising their own pay to maintain inequality, you get
| inflation any time you give money to the poor.
|
| Economic conservatives tend to overstate this problem, in my
| opinion--there's nothing preventing you from just raising the
| UBI proportional to inflation. But historically, minimum wage
| hasn't tracked inflation, and I worry that UBI would suffer
| the same problem.
|
| > For one humans are tricky in that they don't just lie down
| and accept the laws you want that go against what they want
| and instead undermine and loophole it in ingenius ways.
| Trivially that would encourage "nesting doll tiered"
| subsidary companies and contractors to bypass the limits.
|
| This problem exists in any solution, including all the ones
| that already exist. It should be addressed, but I don't think
| that's a reasonable criticism of any solution if it applies
| to all of them.
|
| > Second the high end of income wouldn't even be affected as
| they make their money largely from investments not salary or
| wages. Even if they got the seed for investments from their
| high salaries - like every retired athlete who managed to
| stay rich and even get richer after endorsements dried up.
|
| Yes, we'd have to find a way to treat investment income as
| equivalent to pay in order for this to work.
| WC3w6pXxgGd wrote:
| Giving +free money to people is exactly the opposite of what
| money exists to do. Money is a representation of value that you
| produce. It makes no sense when given for nothing.
|
| + The money isn't free. By stealing money from productive people,
| you're laying claim to someone else's labor, which is literally
| the definition of slavery.
|
| If the solution is to print the money, then you're imposing a tax
| on everybody through inflation (and future taxation).
| barrenko wrote:
| UBI is inevitable. Like software development, whoever makes it
| first will win and bring us closer to our Star Trekian furute.
| foobar_ wrote:
| Are you sure were are not heading towards The Expanse ;P
|
| Here's one counter argument for UBI. Who will do all the boring
| work needed for building a dam / apartment ? If we are honest
| about it, most of this boring, physically harmful and
| repetitive infrastructure work is only done by the working
| class that chooses to do it because the alternative is begging.
| It's because of the threat of extreme poverty and unemployment
| that the working class works. If they are able to sustain
| themselves with UBI why would they work ?
|
| Who will do the boring data entry work in our industry ?
| chillacy wrote:
| The author of the expanse himself clarified that Basic is not
| UBI http://www.scottsantens.com/the-expanse-basic-support-
| basic-...
| palisade wrote:
| When the pipes in your house malfunction causing gallons of water
| and feces to spray out of the toilet onto the nice wood floor you
| just installed in your newly government granted free time. But,
| you can't call a plumber because they're all on UBI watching Bob
| Ross howto videos and painting beautiful landscapes, remember the
| name Andrew Yang.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| Man, you're so right! Plumbers are all lazy pieces of shit that
| would all stop working immediately if they could feed their
| family.
| palisade wrote:
| It's not about lazyness. It is a matter of having all your
| needs and wants fulfilled and not needing to work. Where you
| can finally simply pursue hobbies. Why do any kind of labor
| if everything is met. Especially janitorial, plumbing, heavy
| lifting, dredging in miserable conditions, or any other
| number of difficult thankless jobs.
|
| Go watch dirty jobs the tv show, it's an eye opener. There
| are even people who climb down in sewers and scrap our feces
| off the walls in big cities. Who would want to do that if
| they could just get on UBI and build gokarts in their spare
| time instead.
|
| You know those wind turbines the power grid relies on? Dirty
| jobs had an episode that showed how they have to climb up
| inside them, crawl into really tight spaces, and clean out
| debris to keep the turbines functioning. It's a tough,
| harrowing, frightening and claustrophobic experience.
| sketchyj wrote:
| I think it's very likely that a UBI would make salaries for
| those types of jobs go up quite a bit. People wouldn't feel
| like they "had" to do them just to make rent. I don't have
| a problem with those people making more money for the jobs
| they do. I think they've earned that.
| artsyca wrote:
| Even if there is a case for universal basic income these are not
| the droids you seek when it comes to endorsing it as a concept in
| fact my instinct tells me they'll fumble it and end up causing it
| to fall out of favour even if it could've been implemented
|
| The reason is these two lead with their egos rather than
| engendering true community belonging
| zelly wrote:
| UBI only makes sense in the science fiction world that Andrew
| Yang and other non-technical journalists think is somehow
| imminent. We still need people to make things. There are still
| guys hanging off the side of garbage trucks every day and people
| still pick fruits by hand. If no one does these things, you will
| starve and die. We cannot survive forever on financial
| engineering by bureaucrats and importing all our necessities from
| other countries that actually make things.
| Reedx wrote:
| It doesn't replace people making things, though. You'd still
| want to work and create value to improve your situation. It'd
| just function as a floor and provide some stability.
|
| Bearing in mind the increasing rate of job destruction and
| creation. We're no longer in a world where you can rely on
| being able to have the same profession your whole life.
|
| Having that floor would be useful to smooth those transitions
| out, and a boon to entrepreneurship if it's easier for people
| to take risks.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| > It doesn't replace people making things, though. You'd
| still want to work and provide value to improve your
| situation.
|
| Doing shitty jobs usually doesn't improve one's situation
| though. If you earn minimum wage you're going to be better
| off just trying to gain a marketable skill and living off
| your income.
|
| You say 'easier for people to take risks'. Well, yeah. So
| who's gonna be dumb enough to keep scrubbing grime off the
| bathroom floor when its easy and safe to invest in yourself?
| There's a solution to that of course, which is "pay people
| more", which is great. Now people get paid enough to merit
| working a shit job even with UBI. But now we have a different
| problem, things cost more to produce, which means prices go
| up! How much do they go up? Well probably to around the point
| at which the guy scrubbing grime is at the same level of
| economic wealth as before, and the guy who stopped to work on
| self improvement suddenly can't survive on his not-longer-
| basic UBI.
|
| We need people to perform shitty jobs. Increasing real wages
| would be a good step to do that. Talk of people being able to
| take more risks in entrepreneurship is just techie dreams
| about how it could be better if their privileged economic
| condition were a little more privileged. It's not wrong, but
| it's hardly an important problem for society.
| zelly wrote:
| There are countries with a permanent dole. See the UK and
| other Northern Euro nations. You just have to fake an autism
| diagnosis to get $3k euros a month in cash alone (not
| counting all the other programs). Why isn't that the
| entrepreneurship capital of the world? Why is Europe still so
| poor? Why is America--the only place where there isn't a
| safety net and you can literally die on the street if you
| make too many bad decisions--the entrepreneurship capital of
| the world? Lots of businesses have been founded by people
| desperate to make a buck. Necessity is the mother of all
| invention. People take risks out of desperation, not for
| "fun".
| DanBC wrote:
| > See the UK and other Northern Euro nations. You just have
| to fake an autism diagnosis to get $3k euros a month in
| cash alone (not counting all the other programs).
|
| In the UK we have a variety of disability benefits. Someone
| starting a claim today is probably going to apply for New
| Style ESA. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-style-
| employment-and-support...
|
| > If you have been found to have limited capability for
| work, you will move onto the 'main phase' for New Style ESA
| and you will get the basic allowance, plus a 'support
| component' if you are put in the support group.
|
| > basic allowance (standard rate) - up to PS74.35 (per
| week)
|
| > support component - PS39.20 (per week)
|
| ((74.35 + 39.20) * 52) / 12 = PS492.05 per calendar month.
| That's EUR550 per month.
|
| To qualify for this with autism you'll need to persuade
| your GP to give you a referral to local MH services, and
| persuade them to give you a referral to an autism
| assessment service, and then you'd need to persuade two
| specialist healthcare professionals that you have autism.
| That will give you the diagnosis. However, the Department
| for Work and Pensions will use their own independent
| healthcare professionals and you'll need to pass that
| assessment. That's not seeing if you're autistic or not,
| that's seeing if you have impairments in your day to day
| life that interfere with your ability to work. These
| functional assessments are carried out every 3 years.
| xwdv wrote:
| This is anecdotal but I haven't seen guys hanging off garbage
| trucks in a long time. Around here it's just one guy with a
| hydraulic arm on the truck that picks up the cans and dumps out
| garbage, and he does it very very efficiently. Pretty soon it
| should be possible to even replace the driver with a self
| driving truck that goes around pre determined paths in the
| neighborhood.
| luckylion wrote:
| It's the same here, but not where I lived a few years ago.
| It's just not practical in the densely populated inner city.
| Garbage containers can't be lined up at the street, are
| stored in back yards etc, and you still need people to pull
| them to the street and push them back.
|
| Where I live now, that job now is done by the home owners or
| by staff of the apartment buildings. The job didn't go away,
| it's just no longer done by the garbage collectors.
| aintnoprophet wrote:
| That may be true in populated areas. But, what about areas
| that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford
| robot trucks. I see people hanging off garbage trucks all the
| time in the midwestern low pop and rural areas.
| xwdv wrote:
| Robot trucks are perfect for those areas; cheaper, faster,
| better.
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| You're welcome to personally finance south pedoka
| county's multi-million dollar purchase of robo-garbage
| trucks. oh, and figure out how that garbage collector can
| now support themselves.
|
| I realize this runs against the reality of HN, but not
| all solutions are technology, and not all technology
| solutions are as simple as "just do X". It's like the
| "dropbox is just ..." meme turned up to 11
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that
| is too poor to afford robot trucks.
|
| The robot trucks are cheaper than the humans that operate
| the non-robot trucks, so your argument doesn't make much
| sense here.
| z0r wrote:
| Need some evidence for that.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| [1] https://www.commercialtrucktrader.com/Garbage/trucks-
| for-sal...
|
| [2] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-
| collector...
|
| Keep in mind a truck lasts for years, while a truck
| driver has to be paid yearly. I'm not figuring in
| maintenance costs for the truck here--if you'd like to
| argue that yearly maintenance costs for the truck are the
| same as the cost of the truck, I can look that up too,
| but I'm hoping you are a reasonable person.
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| >> The robot trucks are cheaper than the humans that
| operate the non-robot trucks
|
| not if you understand accounting. I can hire a guy today
| at <$20/hr operating cost to do it manually. That robot
| truck is a much more significant capital investment that
| will amortize over 10+ years.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| 1. Loans: it seems you've forgotten these exist.
|
| 2. Private garbage collection companies: just because a
| municipality doesn't have money to buy a robot truck in
| cash, doesn't mean the private garbage collection company
| that serves most of the surrounding municipalities
| doesn't.
|
| 3. If you actually look up the prices, the numbers are so
| skewed in the favor of automation that even without loans
| or private companies, I very much doubt there are any
| cases where this would take 10+ years to amortize. Your
| $20/hour collector translates to $30K/year if they works
| 30 hours/week, or $300K in 10 years. Is it your claim
| that robot trucks cost $300K more than non-robot trucks?
| karatestomp wrote:
| Moved to a poor, small (~250k) "metro" area midwestern city
| around 2008. Robot arm garbage trucks!
|
| Moved back to a much richer one 10x larger a couple years
| later. No robot arm garbage trucks then, and still none now.
| Bags on the end of the driveway, guys hanging on trucks.
| zelly wrote:
| "pretty soon" is when? garbage trucks are giant, quarter
| million dollar machines with giant forks on them that could
| demolish thousands of homes in an accident before someone
| shoots its tires. this seems like one of those things that
| will still be done manually for years after level 5. imagine
| a self-operated crane constructing a skyscraper. it's not
| that it's inherently more difficult than self-driving--the
| stakes are too high and one disaster could undo decades of
| savings from not hiring people.
| badwolf wrote:
| Volvo's been working on building self-driving garbage trucks:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJSHXr8i-ZU
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > We still need people to make things. There are still guys
| hanging off the side of garbage trucks every day and people
| still pick fruits by hand. If no one does these things, you
| will starve and die.
|
| Sure.
|
| There are also millions of unemployed and disabled people who
| don't work, and we haven't suddenly starved and died. On the
| contrary, we just throw away billions of pounds of food each
| year[1]. So it seems that the problem isn't a shortage of
| workers.
|
| Meanwhile, though, people are starving and dying, in the US, at
| higher levels than any other industrialized nation, because our
| social safety net is inadequate.
|
| So if you are worried about people starving and dying, maybe
| look at what actually is causing people to starve and die.
|
| [1] https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| 1) The "U" in "UBI" means that working another job does not
| stop you from receiving UBI, which means it may still make
| sense to do so if you want more income. UBI is supposed to be
| enough to live on, not enough to have everything you might
| want; there are at least preliminary results that show UBI
| doesn't stop people from working.
|
| 2) UBI will tend to mean less people willing to work low-paying
| unpleasant jobs, which means employers will have to pay more
| for those jobs. People who would only take such jobs because
| they _have_ to, but don 't actually want those jobs, will no
| longer need to take them.
|
| 3) Because of (2), more research effort and investment will go
| into automating and otherwise reducing the number of humans
| required for unpleasant jobs. And with UBI, that becomes an
| unmitigated _good_ , with no worry about putting people out of
| work.
| zelly wrote:
| > which means employers will have to pay more for those jobs
|
| Yeah no kidding so there will be hyperinflation. Making the
| net effect of UBI almost zilch. What use is $1000 bucks when
| toilet paper is $100 a roll.
|
| > 3) Because of (2), more research effort and investment will
| go into automating and otherwise reducing the number of
| humans required for unpleasant jobs. And with UBI, that
| becomes an unmitigated good, with no worry about putting
| people out of work.
|
| So there will be a giant underclass of people who live on
| nothing but UBI (UBIers) while a small minority of elite
| researchers in corporate labs come up with more ways to keep
| the UBIers from earning their own living. Great. And who buys
| all the stuff? Is the "stuff" just for the gilded class smart
| enough to work? Or do we just give the UBIers a raise every
| now and then to "stimulate" the economy? How is this not
| communism?
| drak0n1c wrote:
| It's a gamble - either 2 will lead to 3, or 2 will lead to
| input and output prices of goods being raised. Probably some
| of both.
|
| Hopefully more of 3 than the alternative, because the
| alternative scenario of prices rising has negative
| consequences in the form of economic deadweight loss even if
| UBI pays for the price increases.
| smalltalks wrote:
| Technically speaking , many European countries already have
| "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...)
|
| They are reserved for individuals "Not Active" though (
| Unemployed and not looking for a Job ) over a certain age.
|
| Those "BI" massively lower poverty , which usually massively
| reduce crime-rate , drugs related usage etc...
|
| With 700EUR/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have enaugh
| for food and rent , and that's it...
|
| For America it's different, America cannot technically afford
| "BI" because the entirety of the US economy has been built on
| having 20% of the population living under the poverty line in
| order for good & services to be cheap and consumed in mass.
|
| Having "UBI" in US would create a skyrocket inflation because
| worker who are paid 10$/Hour would drop their work and stay at
| home and do something that is more profitable for them.
|
| Hence , the American culture revolve almost entirely around
| production of good and services for happiness.
|
| In France few workers drop off the "Industrial" economy , they
| buy a Farm and live of "BI" and their own agriculture and go back
| to the city to buy commodities ( Gas , Cosmetic etc... ), it's
| common in Italy and Spain as well IIRC.
| jedberg wrote:
| People keep forgetting that a UBI won't cover immigrants.
| Immigrants would end up doing all the jobs that citizens don't
| want to do.
|
| That's the biggest problem with UBI. It creates a default class
| system.
| burrows wrote:
| If only one country provides UBI to immigrants, that country
| will see a rise in immigration. At what point do taxes raised
| from the new residents exceed the money paid out?
|
| Or maybe you're talking about UBI to immigrants, but not
| actually allowing any immigration.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Doesn't that happen in the US already? Farm work, hotel
| cleaning, groundskeeping... all heavily reliant upon
| immigrant labor.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yes. Which is why the UBI wouldn't make nearly as much
| difference as people think. Nearly all the "work people
| don't want to do" is already done by immigrants who won't
| qualify for UBI (but would still be paying the VAT taxes
| that fund it).
|
| That's basically how the math works out. Immigrants fund a
| lot of the UBI by paying into it but not benefiting from
| it. We would need a lot of protections for non-citizen
| workers to protect them from being exploited.
|
| To be clear, I'm a big fan of UBI and think it's a great
| idea, I just worry about the unintended consequences.
| mydongle wrote:
| I don't know what immigrants mean here. Like migrant workers
| or illegal immigrants?
|
| Otherwise, we are a country full of immigrants who have
| become citizens or legal residents and would benefit from
| UBI.
| jedberg wrote:
| Immigrants means anyone in the US that isn't a citizen.
|
| Legal residents would not get UBI until they become
| citizens.
| mydongle wrote:
| Why wouldn't we allow legal residents to receive it?
| jedberg wrote:
| Politics mainly. It's already hard to convince people to
| give up part of their wealth for their fellow citizens.
| Good luck convincing them to give it up for non-citizens.
|
| Also, logistics. If immigrants can get the UBI, then
| people would flood in from all over the world just to get
| UBI. You'd either have a ton of expense, or you'd have to
| make legal immigration nearly impossible.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It would certainly be challenging to be a non-citizen
| resident if you have to pay the same taxes as everyone
| else, but are cut out of such a major benefit.
|
| Basically a gigantic extra tax for not having
| citizenship.
| matthewbauer wrote:
| Without the right to vote, I think it would be hard to
| get much political will for it. Even if we started out
| giving it to noncitizens, it would be the first thing cut
| in budget cuts.
| burrows wrote:
| > With 700EUR/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have
| enaugh for food and rent , and that's it...
|
| Contingent benefits disincentivize people from participating in
| the economy. People paid to do nothing... do nothing.
|
| > For America it's different, America cannot technically afford
| "BI" because the entirety of the US economy has been built on
| having 20% of the population living under the poverty line in
| order for good & services to be cheap and consumed in mass.
|
| Under any economic regime there will be a poorest 20% at any
| given time.
|
| > Having "UBI" in US would create a skyrocket inflation because
| worker who are paid 10$/Hour would drop their work and stay at
| home and do something that is more profitable for them.
|
| It causes inflation because more cash is chasing the same
| number of goods.
|
| > Hence , the American culture revolve almost entirely around
| production of good and services for happiness.
|
| Propaganda.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| A lot of the UBI in Europe is benefits in kind. Healthcare is
| the obvious one, but also police forces with a higher degree
| of professionalism, better access to (and treatment by) the
| justice system, clean water, higher food standards, it goes
| on. Right now we are benefiting from a coherent and effective
| response to Covid-19. All these things can be found in the US
| - if you can afford to pay.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Or live in the right area. The US does have a lot of high
| quality government services ... unevenly distributed.
| williamdclt wrote:
| > Contingent benefits disincentivize people from
| participating in the economy. People paid to do nothing... do
| nothing.
|
| That's, at best, highly debatable. I would like data showing
| that (or the opposite)
|
| > Under any economic regime there will be a poorest 20% at
| any given time.
|
| That's not what "20% of the population living under the
| poverty line" means. It means that 20% of people don't earn
| enough to live decently, which is highly dependent on the
| economic regime
| asien wrote:
| > Propaganda.
|
| Nope it's not.
|
| In order for welfare to be << legalized >> , and for taxpayer
| to accept that their money will go to <<Non-Active>>
| individuals it's necessary to have a cultural fit between the
| two.
|
| You cant tax like Norway or France ( 40% overall ) if people
| believe that you should work to earn a living, it's not right
| to do so. American would never accept such sky high taxe rate
| if it cause against their believes and thus their culture.
|
| US rely on entrepreneurship which create wealth which enable
| people to buy goods/services.
|
| This is 100% cultural not propaganda.
| joppy wrote:
| A very high progressive tax is compatible with the belief
| that people should work to earn a living. If I have a lot
| of money, I can invest it and for almost no work grow my
| wealth or get another income stream. How is that fair? And
| why does this observation often get left behind?
| tomcooks wrote:
| > Technically speaking , many European countries already have
| "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...)
|
| Are you talking about welfare? Because that's far from
| universal. I might have misunderstood you so if you can
| clarify.
|
| > it's common in Italy and Spain as well IIRC.
|
| Have you got any sources on these claims about France, Italy
| and Spain? Never heard of this.
| pharke wrote:
| >In France few workers drop off the "Industrial" economy , they
| buy a Farm and live of "BI" and their own agriculture and go
| back to the city to buy commodities ( Gas , Cosmetic etc... ),
| it's common in Italy and Spain as well IIRC.
|
| Maybe this would actually be a better implementation. Rather
| than pouring resources into deciding who qualifies for BI you
| could just establish "havens" for people who cannot or will not
| work within the current system. The only qualification then is
| to move to that haven after which you will be provided with a
| place to live, an optional job, food, clothing, etc. but
| limited to only what's necessary. Essentially establishing
| small scale communes within the larger body of a capitalist
| nation. It could provide an escape for people who don't want to
| partake in the rat race and just want to exist quietly and
| pursue their own interests while living spartan lifestyles. You
| could even go the other way and provide other special zones for
| unfettered capitalism with 0 taxes and no publicly funded
| institutions. As long as people can choose where they want to
| live and can leave when it no longer suits them I don't see why
| this couldn't work to some degree.
| BosunoB wrote:
| >Having "UBI" in US would create a skyrocket inflation because
| worker who are paid 10$/Hour would drop their work and stay at
| home and do something that is more profitable for them.
|
| Unless you have some hard data, your argument doesn't seem very
| convincing. The numbers could easily work out in any way, and
| it would probably depend on the actual amount of UBI you use,
| because the effect on the workforce and the spending power of
| consumers would be important for determining the amount of
| inflation. Studies are useful in situations like this.
|
| Also, I mean, this subtly doubles as an argument against a
| minimum wage increase. In the same sense that a UBI might
| slightly decrease the workforce and lead to higher wages for
| those remaining (and inflation), a minimum wage increase would
| also. Do you have a proposed tool to increase the wages of an
| immiserated 20% of the population that doesn't also have the
| potential to cause inflation?
| ueueshitashita wrote:
| > Unless you have some hard data, your argument doesn't seem
| very convincing.
|
| Seeing as plenty of people are earning more with the federal
| unemployment compensation than they would if they were
| working full time, I'm not sure what exactly is
| "unconvincing" about it.
| wesammikhail wrote:
| > Technically speaking , many European countries already have
| "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...)
|
| No they have social safety nets not UBI. You are equating two
| ENTIRELY different concepts.
| Press2forEN wrote:
| Years ago, proponents of UBI claimed that it was a replacement
| for all other forms of social welfare. Now it appears by most
| proposals to be yet another means-tested add-on.
|
| What happened?
| uses wrote:
| I think there has been growing momentum behind the idea that
| some needs aren't met best by a market approach. One of the
| ideas behind UBI is that people can figure out what they need,
| and just spend the money.
|
| But that doesn't really solve the needs that may not be optimal
| for a 100% market approach - probably the big two being health
| and education.
| gowld wrote:
| And housing.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| People studied the UBI idea and recognized the costs of giving
| money to everyone are so enormous that it's unworkable. That's
| there the means testing has come in to try to limit that.
|
| Something more like a "guaranteed minimum income" where you
| can't have less money than what is required to have a good
| standard of living is a cheaper and more effective idea that
| accomplishes the same goals of ending poverty.
| nawitus wrote:
| > People studied the UBI idea and recognized the costs of
| giving money to everyone are so enormous that it's
| unworkable.
|
| Not really. There are UBI models that are more or less zero
| cost - taxes are increased by roughly the UBI amount for
| employed workers, and for the unemployed the UBI would be
| similar to the unemployment benefits they would lose.
| uoaei wrote:
| If the rhetoric is solely around "government spending" then
| the perspective will always be that UBI is "too expensive".
|
| But the money doesn't just vanish when it enters people's
| bank accounts. All of a sudden, banks have a lot more
| collateral against which to borrow and invest, by virtue of
| the fact that the bank accounts which store the UBI have
| money in them. People _spend_ that money and it enters and
| moves through the economy. The government taxes it back out
| via sales taxes, income taxes, capital gains taxes, etc.
|
| I think, in general, it's worth having an economy that keeps
| moving. If you let too few people have too much proportion of
| available wealth, the consumers won't have any to work with
| and your economy will be entirely dependent on luxury goods
| for a tiny proportion of the population.
| chris_va wrote:
| A higher velocity of capital ~= larger economy, which is
| good.
|
| However, a higher velocity of capital without commensurate
| economic value being created ~= massive inflation.
|
| This is a potential risk for UBI, and one that small-scale
| studies do not cover. Ideally, the additional economic
| value would be greater than the face value of the capital
| transferred every year, but there is no guarantee that is
| correct (nor is there any reason they should even be on the
| same order of magnitude).
|
| Implementing UBI on a national scale would be a grand
| experiment. Most grand experiments tend to fail with
| massive upheaval. I think for UBI to be adopted, you would
| need a plausible incremental strategy with a lot of safety
| checks.
| uoaei wrote:
| Yes, taking things _ad absurdum_ in either direction will
| lead to catastrophe.
|
| The perspective of MMT is that government can and should
| tax out money at a rate that keeps the economy from
| inflating beyond the scope of our control, and inject it
| at a rate that sustains the velocity of capital. Making
| this perspective the dominant one in discourse, however,
| would require a lot more public trust in government
| before people got comfortable with the idea of
| governments taxing us for our benefit.
| chrisin2d wrote:
| > However, a higher velocity of capital without
| commensurate economic value being created ~= massive
| inflation.
|
| This is a good point. Money maps to stuff and services.
| But there is ample surplus production (and unused
| capacity) in our economy.
|
| Every year 40bn+ pounds of food is wasted at the retail
| level (on top of all the waste that happens before retail
| in production), while ~11% of the American population is
| food insecure.
|
| Nearly every clothing company -- H&M, Nike, Burberry,
| Eddie Bauer, and so on -- destroys billions of dollars of
| unsold clothing every year in order to preserve their
| brand.
|
| We have material abundance thanks to highly optimised
| mechanisation and more recently automation in agriculture
| and manufacturing. UBI can allow the poorest parts of
| society access the surplus that we would otherwise
| destroy.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A functioning economy is not built on pieces of paper. It's
| built on people working and producing value.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| UBI is _indirectly_ means-tested; if you make too much money,
| you end up giving back as much or more in taxes and /or
| partial UBI clawbacks than what you would get via UBI. This
| actually ends up working better and being cheaper than most
| alternatives (including the "guaranteed minimum"), because
| it's comparatively easy to structure a comprehensive tax
| system so that it minimizes distortions on people's behavior,
| and hard to design a means-testing policy to the same effect.
| The latter is especially true given the patchwork of social-
| insurance programs that currently exists. Giving cash can
| replace many of these programs, and making the policy a
| 'universal' one reduces administrative costs.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It's actually a big bureaucratic problem to give people
| several thousand dollars and then demand most of it back
| later. Most people don't notice income taxes since it comes
| out of their paycheque. It would genuinely be tough problem
| to educate people to not spend their basic income, or to
| design a system where it's clawed back through paycheques.
| habitue wrote:
| That's why it's often formulated as a negative income tax
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > It would genuinely be tough problem to educate people
| to not spend their basic income, or to design a system
| where it's clawed back through paycheques.
|
| We can use the system that we already have, that is,
| income tax. It has worked fine for quite a while.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Yeah note the line after that. This is a new wrinkle to
| the norm.
|
| Not saying these issues can't be addressed, just pushing
| back against the notion that UBI is simple to implement.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > or to design a system where it's clawed back through
| paycheques.
|
| It would be no different than e.g. the existing payroll
| tax, or income tax withholding. You'd just notice it as a
| reduction in your paycheck. And if your income is high
| enough, the UBI can simply be a tax credit.
| moduspol wrote:
| The idea of replacing existing social programs with cash
| handouts reminds me of Bitcoin's earlier days. Proponents
| were thinking of what it would be like if they were poor,
| and not what life is like for poor people.
|
| It is not the case that you can reasonably just give large
| groups of people with histories of poor financial literacy
| cash as a replacement for food, shelter, or other
| necessities. Many people will make bad choices if just
| given money. That's why many of these programs were built
| this way: to ensure people can't spend all their cash and
| be unable to afford baby formula or rent.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Many experiments have been done that involve giving UBI-
| like grants (and even large, one-time-only cash grants)
| to people in extreme poverty. The money gets spent in
| sensible ways, by and large. Investing in one's shelter
| (e.g. replacing a leaky roof), paying for children's
| education or buying assets for a profitable business
| venture are extremely common choices. Regardless of their
| "financial literacy" (people in extreme poverty are
| hardly used to dealing with financials!) people seem to
| grok that they're getting something quite valuable, and
| are not inclined to waste what they get.
| moduspol wrote:
| I haven't yet seen a UBI experiment that _replaced_
| someone 's pre-existing means for food, shelter, or other
| necessities. But maybe I missed it.
|
| I don't think anyone doubts that often people will spend
| additional money they are given productively.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Why shouldn't cash be the benchmark when it comes to
| aiding poor folks? If giving food or shelter really is
| more helpful than just giving the equivalent cost in cold
| hard cash, that will be quite interesting. But let's see
| the proof of that.
| moduspol wrote:
| They don't have the financial literacy skills to manage
| it properly.
|
| I'm not trying to be unreasonably judgemental, and I
| don't mean things like bond rates or yield curves. Things
| like making sure you have enough dollars at the end of
| the month to make a rent payment. Making sure the check
| gets written so it actually happens. Keeping track of
| automated withdrawals and ensuring the number stays above
| zero with the timing of all of them.
|
| This is not trivial at all for a huge chunk of the
| population that is served by social welfare programs. You
| can't just expect it to work out giving them cash
| instead.
| kyleee wrote:
| that's a deeply cynical and paternalistic mindset
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| I believe this has been debunked by previous UBI studies,
| Give Directly, etc..
|
| The vast majority of poor people do just fine with money
| when given to them. The 1-2% who are addicted to
| substances or mentally ill will always need additional
| services, but why throw out the huge efficiency gains in
| just direct cash transfers to all because of the worry
| that 1-2% might waste it? The efficiency gains of a UBI
| vs. most means-tested programs is likely more on the
| order of 20-50%.
|
| A similar argument is "would we give a UBI to
| billionaires too?! What a waste!" Yes, what a waste of
| 0.0000003% of the UBI!
| chillacy wrote:
| A means tested NIT and a UBI can be designed to be
| equivalent: https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-
| ubi-means-t...
|
| A guaranteed minimum income would need to phase out by
| income, so as to not discourage people from working if they
| want to.
| jdc wrote:
| Yep and as a replacement, it was supposed to drastically cut
| administrative costs.
| frogpelt wrote:
| It definitely should. But one real problem with bureaucracy
| is that it tends to go to great lengths to justify itself. It
| also self-replicates like a virus.
|
| So, in practice, I imagine there would be lots of offices and
| agencies, services and interdependent liaison offices and
| agencies along with the requisite inspector general offices
| and agencies and the necessary committees, subcommittees, and
| working groups that would have to be created.
|
| In the land of government bureaucracy, the rapidly increasing
| fixed-pie of current and (hopefully) future taxpayer revenue
| gets divided up into more and more slices every day.
| gota wrote:
| I think that was a major point, too, because a significant
| portion of the money available for social assistance is spent
| on deciding who can get it and fighting 'fraud'. A blanket
| universal give is a lot easier.
|
| However - I've always been puzzled by how each person in the
| US doesn't have a public, singularly identifying number
| assigned. Doesn't that make even an 'universal' basic income
| hard to define? How do you guarantee that every person gets
| one, and only one, BI check every month? How do you find out
| who is dead and should stop getting one...?
|
| From what I know, SSN are used for stuff like that, but
| there's all this weird stuff about it (althoug I admit my
| knowledge of it comes from a half forgotten CGP Grey video,
| and that the impression that stuck)
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Social Security's admin costs are ~.7% of the program's
| budget, eliminating admin overhead, means-testing, and
| fraud fighting won't get you many gains:
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-
| basics-...
| jdc wrote:
| I'm not in the US, so I know little about its social
| security programs, isn't Social Security is one of many?
|
| Also this paragraph from the linked article suggests that
| the 0.7% figure does not include means testing:
|
| _Indeed, universal participation and the absence of
| means-testing make Social Security very efficient to
| administer. Administrative costs amount to only 0.7
| percent of annual benefits, far below the percentages for
| private retirement annuities. Means-testing Social
| Security would impose significant reporting and
| processing burdens on both recipients and administrators,
| undercutting many of those advantages while yielding
| little savings._
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Most proposals are temporary relief in response to the crisis,
| small scale trials, or campaign promises kept intentionally
| vague.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > What happened?
|
| Somebody did the math.
| slg wrote:
| Because replacing all other forms of social welfare is
| completely impractical from a political standpoint in either
| the short or medium term. It would involve huge societal
| changes that would require most people to rethink how
| government works. That isn't something that would happen
| quickly. If you are a UBI proponent, you can either spend
| multiple decades fighting that fight before you see any
| progress or you compromise on a more feasible implementation.
| andrekandre wrote:
| the other thing is, without proper price controls (rent,
| basic food stuffs, transportation etc) business will look at
| it as a chance to jack up prices because "free money"
|
| the other aspect is, no amount of ubi is going to cover huge
| medical costs that the current u.s system incurs, as well as
| higher education for those thst really do want to improve
| themselves and contribute
|
| so (i think) ubi isnt a bad idea, but it needs to be coupled
| with other structural reforms and price controls to prevent
| being a huge potential diaster
| bhupy wrote:
| > the other thing is, without proper price controls (rent,
| basic food stuffs, transportation etc) business will look
| at it as a chance to jack up prices because "free money"
|
| I don't buy this argument. Businesses that do this would be
| leaving money on the table: namely the poor people that
| were outside of their total addressable market. Whereas
| before those folks would never have been able to provide
| revenue, with more cash in their pockets, they are now
| potential consumers. Increasing prices just maintains the
| same TAM for no real reason -- you can make more revenue by
| serving the newly minted consumers.
|
| The only good/service for which this breaks down is
| housing, for which there is a true supply scarcity -- but
| even that ceases to be true in a regime with proper zoning
| reform (like Japan).
| jacobr1 wrote:
| You can only keep the prices high with cartelization or
| true scarcity. Though removing subsidies (for things like
| public transport) can also raise prices. But our food
| supply is highly distributed. If one vendor charges higher-
| prices, others will take the opportunity to offer lower
| prices as long as they still can get the margin. We often
| debate various forms of market failure on this forum, but
| in the cases of functioning markets, supply and demand does
| indeed work.
| nyhc99 wrote:
| What's wrong with competition as a price control? Isn't
| that the basis of capitalism? If someone else wants to
| raise their prices because "free money" then I'll just keep
| my prices the same and steal all their business.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >What happened?
|
| Every single proposed UBI was either insufficient to cover
| people's basic needs, obscenely expensive, or both. That's what
| happened. There simply isn't enough tax revenue, even if you
| seized 100% of the wealth and future earnings of the wealthy,
| to provide a basic income sufficient for most people to live
| off of.
|
| Also a lot of proposals would have ended up giving the poor and
| elderly less than they get under current programs. And the
| claims of reduced overhead wouldn't have made much of a dent in
| things either, IIRC admin costs for Social Security are less
| than 1% of what the actual payouts are
| nawitus wrote:
| > Every single proposed UBI was either insufficient to cover
| people's basic needs, obscenely expensive, or both.
|
| I don't think that's true. In a really simple model imagine
| UBI of $2000/month given for everyone. Then imagine
| increasing income taxes by $2000 for all employed workers.
| Then the true cost would be difference between current
| unemployed benefits of the UBI, which shoudln't be obscenely
| expensive (in normal economic times). Employed workers
| shouldn't care about the increased taxes because their take
| home money would remain identical.
|
| That's of course a very simplistic model, but explains how
| you shouldn't just count the UBI amount times population as
| the cost.
| wincy wrote:
| But it wouldn't be $2000 per worker, as you'd have to get
| enough tax money to pay the people who aren't working that
| $2000. If I make $6000 a month and you make $0 a month, and
| then we both get $2000 a month from my taxes, how can my
| take home pay remain $6000?
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Well, it would be you and several of your peers making
| $6000 a month, one or two people making an order of
| magnitude more per month, and a whole heckuva lot of
| people making $3k-$4k a month, contributing a
| progressively bigger portion to the one person making $0.
| So, no, you don't hang on to the full $6000... But then
| you may get it back from taxing the capital holdings of
| those people who own exceptionally large amounts of
| private property.
| nnx wrote:
| Current proposals have not been written by long-time proponents
| of UBI afaik, it's been repurposed and repackaged, rather
| badly, by political opportunists who now see the need resonate
| well with electorate during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis?
| cynusx wrote:
| UBI can have a place if the payout is controlled by the federal
| reserve as a means to enact inflation.
|
| Taking it from other people's earnings and spending it through a
| committee of politicians sounds pretty dystopian to me though.
| sangnoir wrote:
| >Taking it from other people's earnings and spending it through
| a committee of politicians sounds pretty dystopian to me
| though.
|
| Assuming you're American: you _do_ know that the House and
| Senate have Appropriations Committees who do literally just
| that, right? If you 're not American, I bet you a dollar your
| government has a similar grouping of politicians.
| admn2 wrote:
| This is totally unrelated to the article but I keep thinking
| about this lately: does anyone know what happened to Noah Glass
| who was a part of the original founding team?
| radiantmonk wrote:
| I watched an interesting, somewhat, kind of related video on
| this today. Although it doesn't quite answer your question
| about what happened to him, interesting watch nonetheless and
| quite informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8N0xN0ihMA
| JoshTko wrote:
| A one time payment of $250 is not UBI. I don't understand how
| anything will be learned about UBI from this.
| rsync wrote:
| Why doesn't he just fund this experiment himself ?
|
| From wikipedia:
|
| "Originally a corporate lawyer, Yang began working in various
| startups and early stage growth companies as a founder or
| executive from 2000 to 2009."
|
| Maybe this a matching donation from Dorsey ?
| nemothekid wrote:
| He probably spent a ton of his own money running for president.
| bermanoid wrote:
| Never fund yourself what someone with 100x the money will fund
| for you.
| blackrock wrote:
| I have difficulty believing that UBI will ever work, unless you
| get the basic problems solved first.
|
| Namely, housing.
|
| The problem actually boils down to democracy itself, where people
| vote for laws that favors themselves, and excludes outsiders,
| specifically the NIMBY crowd. These are the people that vote in
| housing regulations, environmental review injunctions to prevent
| construction, etc.
|
| Regardless of whether UBI is given freely like welfare, these
| NIMBYs will continue to exist, and they will act as a corruption
| on society. They got theirs already, and they will prevent others
| from getting it too.
|
| For all other things, technology should be able to help make
| things plentiful. Food can come from mechanized and automated
| mass farming. Medicine can come from mechanized and automated
| mass production. Clothing, cars, consumer goods, well, I guess
| there are factories in China that can mass produce that.
|
| But either way, unless you solve the core problems first, then
| UBI is dead in the water.
|
| Otherwise, with the low interest rates, and massive corporate
| stock buybacks, then this will just continue to inflate the stock
| market, and property bubble, and other asset prices.
|
| Then, what is the end result? The rents will continue to rise,
| and it will just eat away at your UBI. Now, we're back at square
| one.
| troughway wrote:
| What is stopping companies that make money (to pay for UBI
| through tax increases) from leaving the country to elsewhere with
| lower taxation? Where would this money come from then?
|
| If things do get automated it means labor is no longer needed to
| be sourced locally, making it much easier to uproot and go
| elsewhere.
| cool-guy-69 wrote:
| Where would they go? Every other country has a VAT tax and to
| pay for the version of UBI that Yang proposes would be a VAT
| tax at half the European rate.
| mberning wrote:
| I seriously don't know why people believe this will work and
| unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe. As far
| as I have read most experiments have had mixed results, and we
| don't really know what the full impact will be if implemented in
| a nation of 350MM people. My suspicion is in a couple years
| people will notice that housing, food, and transportation has
| gone up commensurate with their "basic income". Then we will find
| ourselves in a vicious battle to justify raising or lowering it
| every couple years. And forget about ever putting the genie back
| into the bottle. The risks are huge.
| jdhn wrote:
| >I seriously don't know why people believe this will work and
| unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe.
|
| I completely agree. I feel that this is a narrative that's
| parotted by academics who believe that because they may have
| these latent abilities, everybody has this. I haven't seen a
| surge in poetry or startups in the Rust Belt, where lots of
| people are on quasi-UBI (disability payments).
|
| >Then we will find ourselves in a vicious battle to justify
| raising or lowering it every couple years.
|
| There's also the matter of having larger payments to people in
| certain areas in the first place. For example, I can see
| someone saying that there's a "flat" UBI for everyone, but that
| there's also a COLA payment on top of that for people in HCOL
| areas.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree, there is just no way for it to work. We'd be better
| off with less overhead versions of existing programs and higher
| tax breaks for the poor, maybe no federal taxes under 200% of
| poverty. Add in Medicare for all in the same bracket and we
| meet most of the "upside" in a simpler and sustainable plan.
|
| I've spent some time trying to envision the goals of UBI from
| the other side. Could you supplement volunteers and artists
| using a closed loop rewards program? My thinking caused me to
| create The Good Loop, http://thegoodloop.org, it isn't
| implemented yet but hopefully someday.
| jason5543 wrote:
| I think Medicare for all people under 200% of poverty could
| easily be achieved if we hiked up the corporate tax rate to
| what it used to be 50-100 years ago.
|
| But you have to stop the birth tourism, stop handing out
| citizenship to anyone not in America for 4+ generations, and
| deport all of your illegal aliens. Coastal, liberal americans
| want to have it both ways - expensive government services for
| the poor, and the continuous importation of a serf class from
| the 3rd world.
| jason5543 wrote:
| >I don't know why people believe this will unlock the latent
| poet or artist within the average joe.
|
| Great perspective. Before the industrial revolution, most
| people were serfs. Speaking broadly, our genetics and our blood
| have not risen above our essential serfdom. I haven't done my
| homework on UBI; that said, I distrust the concept of radical
| economic schemes to help poor people, because poor people can't
| be helped, they are born slaves and they will die slaves, and
| the current amount of social mobility that the nations of the
| world provide is probably enough to help out those of the slave
| class destined for greater things.
| rocketpastsix wrote:
| Given everything that is going on, the case should be fairly
| straight forward to build. In fact, Yang has bene on top of it
| since Covid19 took hold in America.
|
| I truly hope UBI gains more popularity and strength going
| forward.
| LAMike wrote:
| "the case should be fairly straight forward to build"
|
| Jack built an app for this exact use case.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| UBI has a lot of practical problems. Why not start at universal
| health care or wider affordability of affordable housing and
| education? Without that any UBI will immediately be eaten up by
| rising prices in these areas.
| LAMike wrote:
| Health is a spectrum.
|
| Mental health & physical health are problems easier solved
| with money.
|
| Most major cities have rent control of some sort, if not,
| it's not that hard to start new towns with nation wide UBI.
| There are other places in this country other than SF, LA and
| NY
| happytoexplain wrote:
| It seems to me that many people are trying desperately to
| push all of these proposals, and it's been a borderline
| immobile uphill battle on all fronts. If _any_ of these gain
| traction, we should celebrate, rather than accusing people of
| not _yet_ achieving the others. It also makes sense that UBI
| would be the first to reach the staging phase, since it 's
| the easiest to explain and the easiest to implement.
|
| Of course, your concern is still totally valid if UBI will
| indeed be pointless without the other problems solved. I just
| wanted to point out how easy it is to say "start with
| universal health care and affordability of housing and
| education". That's a huge thing to "start with", and in fact
| we're already deep into the fight for them.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "Of course, your concern is still totally valid if UBI will
| indeed be pointless without the other problems solved. I
| just wanted to point out how easy it is to say "start with
| universal health care and affordability of housing and
| education". That's a huge thing to "start with", and in
| fact we're already deep into the fight for them. "
|
| If you can't solve these issues, UBI simply can't work.
| It's basically a distraction from urgent problems that
| should and could be solved now but may cost money.
| Considering that UBI is often pushed by billionaires I
| wonder if that's the secret plan.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It also makes sense that UBI would be the first to reach
| the staging phase, since it's the easiest to explain and
| the easiest to implement.
|
| As opposed to socialized healthcare, which has a long track
| record and a variety of implementations in every
| industrialized nation to use as inspiration? We would
| literally just have to expand programs that we already have
| (such as the VA or Medicare/Medicaid) to start. Healthcare
| free at the point of service also takes no effort to
| explain - the "Medicare For All" marketing is actually
| designed to explain how easy it would be to _implement._
| yboris wrote:
| A response to what happens to markets when people have more
| money:
|
| More people enter and participate in markets, which makes
| markets work better.
|
| Markets behave better with more participants than with fewer
| participants. UBI is a net positive on this point.
| MiroF wrote:
| Basic macro says this policy would increase AD, which would
| increase inflation in a vacuum.
|
| What would really happen is that the Fed would raise rates,
| which would increase the barrier to market participation
| and we would be back to where we started.
| alexashka wrote:
| Because Andrew Yang is a people pleasing demagogue, who
| operates under 'everyone deserves the same number of basic
| goodies' and 'I am here for the under-privileged' as his core
| messages.
|
| Facing reality without cherry-picking problems the rich
| create while ignoring the problems the poor create would
| undermine his ability to people please the poor and get
| elected.
|
| It's all bullshit - I don't know how many Obamas and Yangs
| it'll take for people to realize that there is no benevolent
| politician that can make the problems of the poor go away
| without having the poor change their ways, the same way there
| is no trainer that can make you get in shape without you
| working your ass off.
|
| UBI or not - smart/creative people would rather not live
| among or deal with self destructive, dangerous dummies. Self
| destructive, dangerous dummies are being very actively
| replaced by robots who don't have the downsides of human
| beings.
|
| The only bargaining chip the dummies have, is that they are
| still necessary for the infrastructure to function. This
| power will be eroded away, until one day, the dummies' only
| argument will be that of a street beggar - won't you spare
| some change? And the smart/creative class will throw some
| change their way, they'll call it UBI.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| That's a common urban legend. The free market drives prices
| down, when demand goes up for flexible markets.
|
| It's easy to throw one or two economic terms around, but its
| a lot more complicated than 'people have more money == prices
| rise'.
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| I am really curious to learn more about why UBI will not
| drive the prices up. Could you indicate any articles that
| elaborate on this?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Better question: why would it? Economics is complicated.
|
| In a free market there's no way to distinguish 'UBI
| money' from any other kind. Try jacking your price up -
| somebody else will have a sale and eat your lunch.
| MiroF wrote:
| But if everyone has more liquidity access, that drives
| prices up. You don't have to do something like
| distinguish UBI money for this to be true.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Again, more buying means more production and reduced
| costs due to volume. Driving prices down. This happens
| too. As well a a dozen other things.
|
| Economics is complicated. Playing dot-to-dot across the
| space with cherry-picked examples is not very useful.
| [deleted]
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "more buying means more production and reduced costs due
| to volume. "
|
| Not in housing, not in health care and not in education.
| In other sectors, yes.
| MiroF wrote:
| > In other sectors, yes.
|
| Not even. But it's not worth arguing about this, it's
| basic macro and if s/he doesn't want to educate
| themselves, that's up to them.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not clear. They build new houses. Health care hires and
| expands. New schools open all the time. And volume
| decreases cost in those areas too.
|
| Now they may be over-regulated and broken; no argument
| there.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Are you saying that housing, education and health care
| haven't seen massive price increases over the last few
| decades?
| drunkonpappy wrote:
| He didn't say that at all
|
| He alluded to how those systems being over-regulated and
| broken prevent the usual economic factors from working.
| E.g. if you don't allow people to build new houses in
| certain places then that makes it quite easy for housing
| prices to go up in those areas
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Then let's fix those first before talking about UBI.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Or not. Because folks are hurting now. And with UBI they
| might be able to move to more affordable locations
| anyway, which helps solve the other problem right there.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| It's not directly UBI, but strong welfare programs don't
| seem to drive up rent prices. Since UBI with a
| corresponding progressive tax is equivalent to welfare,
| I'd assume it'd have similar results.
| MiroF wrote:
| > That's a common urban legend.
|
| Try foundational macroeconomic principle. But it wouldn't
| even get that far, the Fed would just raise rates to offset
| the would-be increase in aggregate demand.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| What principle? Mistaking "money supply vs interest
| rates" for something else?
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "people have more money == prices rise'."
|
| I believe in markets with scarce goods and no alternatives
| this is the case. In healthcare you have no alternatives.
| And as long as housing supply is short, you have no
| alternatives there either. So people end up paying whatever
| is being asked for.
|
| In other markets more money won't raise prices because the
| purchase is optional and there are competing alternatives.
| mattbeckman wrote:
| UBI (in the U.S.) would be like printing more shares of a
| publicly-traded stock and giving all of the new stock to the
| employees of the company.
|
| USD is the reserve currency, so foreign interests (or large
| corps) w/ stockpiles of USD will be the losers due to inflation.
|
| Foreign interests can change which reserve currency they use at-
| will, so wouldn't this be like a direct-fee/dividend U.S.
| citizens (or any UBI-country citizens) could charge those that
| use the currency of the country but don't live there?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > foreign interests will be the losers due to inflation.
|
| Along with anybody with stocks or bonds (including everybody
| with a retirement fund).
| eanzenberg wrote:
| So overall dilution of the currency. Then, increase UBI some
| more to make up for it. Then, dilute the currency some more.
| Over a few cycles become the new Venezuela as most
| entrepreneurs leave for greener fields.
| viklove wrote:
| Easy solution -- we stop the process of QE and replace it
| with a UBI. Why is dilution OK in the name of big corps but
| the next incarnation of Hitler when it's for you and I?
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| Don't strawman, they never mentioned Hitler.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Because supply-side is what provides the country with the
| best economy in the world.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Think of machines and robots as workers that earn pay for their
| work. Then imagine that pay is spread back into the economy
| (like payed workers do), rather than just sitting in the robot
| owners account to "trickle down." Another way of putting this:
| Slavery (or automation) are really great for the upper class
| who owns, but destroys the livelihoods of everyone below who
| has to compete.
|
| Follow up question: How many inventors created their world
| changing machine in dreams of making more money for the upper
| class, vs how many dreamed to help all of humanity?
| paulcole wrote:
| Why can't we outsource basic income to the private sector? Like
| VCs who give money to people who want to sit at home instead of
| lighting money on fire to exploit taxi drivers?
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| VCs primarily care about outsized monetary returns and you
| don't get that from giving money to people.
|
| Tax-deductible charitable donations are probably the closest
| way to incentivize the private sector but VCs was more, not
| just to stay flat and most businesses don't make decisions for
| "the greater good" over more $$.
|
| Can you think of a way to incentivize private experiments in
| UBI?
| luckylion wrote:
| > Can you think of a way to incentivize private experiments
| in UBI?
|
| Contracts that guarantee the recipient will pay X% of their
| income to the UBI source over the next Y years. Claims are
| that people's creative and productive power will be
| unleashed. If true, their income will rise dramatically, and
| they'll pay lots of "taxes" back to the UBI source.
| MiroF wrote:
| So.. loans, but with way shittier terms for the borrower?
| luckylion wrote:
| Loans that automatically disappear after X years with
| interest payments that only apply if you make more than
| $Y (Y = UBI paid out).
|
| It wouldn't be the person asking for a loan that
| speculates on them earning enough to pay it back. It
| would be the entity giving the loan speculating on the
| person earning so much more in the next few years that
| the income-percentage makes them lots of money.
|
| Of course, for it to test UBI, the giving entity must not
| be allowed to decide whether they accept someone or not,
| that would lead to them picking and choosing, like
| insurance companies with pre-existing conditions.
|
| However, if the claims about UBI are true, they won't
| need to, as even the odd slacker will be more than offset
| by the exploding productivity of the overwhelming
| majority.
|
| I'm sure Dorsey could fund it, the question is whether he
| actually believes in the claims of giant benefits and
| virtually no slackers.
| LAMike wrote:
| Any 3 trillion dollar a year VC funds you know of?
|
| I wonder who their LP's would be...
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| If the government starts giving me enough money each month to
| subsist while drastically raising taxes on my earnings from
| employment then I'll simply stop working. I would imagine most
| people would do the same.
| graham_paul wrote:
| > I'll simply stop working
|
| For a few months maybe. Soon, you will realise that to keep
| your previous lifestyle (or to simply fill your time with
| something other than browsing text-heavy sites) you need to
| work. So you will go back to work. And so will everyone else.
| donw wrote:
| What happens if a large number of people can not afford a
| meaningfully better lifestyle than what is possible on a UBI
| because of the tax increases?
|
| (Genuine question, no gotchas here)
| gowld wrote:
| Then it's the same as today.
| graham_paul wrote:
| Better than what?
|
| You seem to forget that while you might be an affluent
| middle/upper class person, a lot of people out there are
| struggling really hard to fulfill their primary needs. You
| realize how many people in the states are poor (lacking
| primary needs resources) or borderline poor? Yes, some
| people (plenty of HN users I am sure) might struggle to
| maintain highly consumerist lifestyles (not sure if that's
| necessarily bad) but for the majority of people, this will
| improve their lives for as long as UBI is a thing. All the
| money spent on fighting social phenomena that is the result
| of people being unable to or/and having being raised
| without enough primary need resources to ensure their
| physical, emotional and cognitive capabilities are not
| hampered by their poverty will be able to be allocated to
| better uses?
| mwfunk wrote:
| People get a UBI regardless of whether or not they work,
| that's the 'U' part. So any money you get from working is
| additional money on top of the UBI. It would be taxed, but
| it's still more money. It's not like other benefits where
| once you start earning your own money, you lose the
| benefit, and thus have to make a choice between not working
| to keep the benefit and working 40 hours a week to make
| similar or marginally more money.
|
| Or, maybe you're taking that into account already, and are
| worried about an uncanny valley in between "not working"
| and "working" where a significant number of people simply
| don't work because that first rung in the "working" ladder
| isn't rewarding enough to start climbing the ladder, so
| they're incentivized to never work. If so, that's certainly
| a concern, but that would also be an indicator of a failed
| system that needed to be revised. It goes without saying
| that any implementation of a UBI system would have to be
| designed such that that didn't happen, but that's not an
| intrinsic quality of UBI systems.
|
| Tax increases themselves would have to be progressive (as
| our current tax system supposedly is and always has been)
| to avoid creating these sorts of discontinuities that would
| disincentivize people from working. Any functional UBI
| system would have to take that into account, otherwise it's
| a failed implementation.
| golf1052 wrote:
| >Or, maybe you're taking that into account already, and
| are worried about an uncanny valley in between "not
| working" and "working" where a significant number of
| people simply don't work because that first rung in the
| "working" ladder isn't rewarding enough to start climbing
| the ladder, so they're incentivized to never work.
|
| This was a concern with the recent economic assistance
| bill, the additional money from this bill going to
| unemployment was higher than minimum wage. Should the
| amount given been lowered so that "it doesn't
| disincentive work"? Maybe this shows that minimum wage
| needs to be raised?
| nyhc99 wrote:
| Not really a fair comparison because in order to get the
| unemployment you have to stop working.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| The cynic in me is thinking that everyone has an extra
| $xxxx/month laying around.
|
| How do I get people to give me their money? Maybe now that free
| app idea, can sell for $1 or $2. Maybe know I can charge
| $3/hour tutoring.
| slg wrote:
| Are you currently only working just to subsist? Because most
| people on HN work much harder than they need to and make much
| more than they need to just to subsist.
| luckylion wrote:
| You currently don't have the option to not work. Most people
| work more than they need to because they realize that the
| future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if
| there's trouble at some point in the future. Give the same
| people a trust fund that takes care of them and that they
| trust to last for their life time, and most will stop working
| as hard. They may still work, but much less and most likely
| on very different things.
| slg wrote:
| It isn't a binary option between work and not work. Most
| people on HN make much more money than they need to
| subsist. If the goal is to only subsist, there is an option
| to reduce hours worked in exchange for reduced pay. The
| exact form that could take varies as not everyone works at
| a company that would support either a shorter workday or
| workweek. However other options exists that don't rely on
| your employer such as taking regular sabbaticals or a very
| early retirement.
|
| There are also numerous financial options available to you
| such as annuities or insurance if you are worried about
| protecting yourself from unforeseen financial hardships.
| luckylion wrote:
| > If the goal is to only subsist, there is an option to
| reduce hours worked in exchange for reduced pay.
|
| No. You need to factor in the future.
|
| The whole passive income/early retirement crowd is a
| great example of it. They want to create regular income
| (from projects/businesses or investments) to allow them a
| simple life for all of their future years, while they go
| do whatever they please. Few people do that, because it
| typically entails working _much_ harder today so you don
| 't have to work as much or at all tomorrow.
|
| If you removed the hurdle or working harder today, many
| people would choose that route.
|
| > There are also numerous financial options available to
| you such as annuities or insurance if you are worried
| about protecting yourself from unforeseen financial
| hardships.
|
| Absolutely. And you need to pay for those. To do that,
| you need to earn more than you currently need to subsist.
| slg wrote:
| Maybe I didn't explain my point well enough since you are
| just talking past it. People generally don't stop once
| they get to a level that would guarantee them subsistence
| living for the rest of their life. Most of us could buy a
| combination of annuities and long term care insurance
| that could provide for ourselves for the rest of our
| lives well before we actually retire. Very few people
| actually pursue this path and most of us continue to work
| until a point that would provide a higher standard of
| living in retirement.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Most people work more than they need to because they
| realize that the future is uncertain and having savings
| will be beneficial if there 's trouble at some point in the
| future. Give the same people a trust fund that takes care
| of them and that they trust to last for their life time,
| and most will stop working as hard. They may still work,
| but much less and most likely on very different things._
|
| Where does this "trust fund" come from? It doesn't just
| magically appear.
|
| What you are actually saying is: you don't want to have to
| exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the
| future in your own life, so instead, you want the
| government to forcibly take resources from other people
| (like me) who _do_ exercise prudence and common sense and
| planning for the future, and use those resources to provide
| you a "trust fund" to take care of you. If I can't avoid
| having my resources stolen from me, my only other option is
| to stop producing any excess over my own minimum needs.
| Which means the "trust fund" you are counting on is no
| longer there, because now nobody has any incentive to
| exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the
| future--because you punished all the people who did that by
| taking their resources away.
|
| This is (a) incompatible with having a free country, and
| (b) a very, very bad idea in general, since society cannot
| survive if people do not have any incentive to exercise
| prudence and common sense and planning for the future.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Where does this "trust fund" come from? It doesn't just
| magically appear.
|
| I agree completely. People work more than they currently
| need to _because_ they don 't have a trust fund. I'm not
| arguing that we should give everybody their personal
| trust fund, I'm explaining why people work and try to
| save up money even though they don't need those savings
| in the next 10 minutes.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I agree completely._
|
| No, you don't. See below.
|
| _> People work more than they currently need to because
| they don 't have a trust fund._
|
| No, people work more than they currently need to because
| they are exercising prudence, common sense, and planning
| for the future. Which every adult human being is supposed
| to take responsibility for doing for themselves, and not
| expect a "trust fund" to magically take care of for them.
|
| You're arguing that if people had a "trust fund", they
| wouldn't need to plan and save for the future. But no
| such "trust fund" can exist in the first place unless
| _some_ people are exercising prudence, common sense, and
| planning for the future. You can 't get rid of
| uncertainty about the future or the need to plan and
| allow for it. So, again, you are saying that the people
| who are going to take responsibility for planning and
| allowing for that uncertainty are going to be punished by
| having the fruits of their planning be taken from them to
| provide a "trust fund" to people who didn't bother to
| plan and allow for uncertainty.
|
| In other words, you _disagree_ with me completely. I
| think I should plan for my future, and you should plan
| for yours. You think I should plan for both our futures,
| and then you should get to just take resources from me
| when you need them in the future since it 's a "trust
| fund".
| thisiszilff wrote:
| UBI feels like a way of addressing the incoming loss of
| jobs due to automation.
|
| > No, people work more than they currently need to
| because they are exercising prudence, common sense, and
| planning for the future. Which every adult human being is
| supposed to take responsibility for doing for themselves,
| and not expect a "trust fund" to magically take care of
| for them.
|
| It may not be materially possible for everyone to
| actually do this within our current economic organization
| in light of automation. People that benefit from UBI may
| very well be responsible and organized.
|
| We can twist this a little and say that the responsible
| and organized thing is to plan for automation, to develop
| skills that make sure you aren't put out of work, etc.
| Personally I find that position logically valid, but I
| ideally would push for UBI while also making sure I have
| a good chance for not needing it.
|
| A cynical take is that UBI is just enough to ensure the
| masses of unemployed would be complacent enough to not
| riot.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> UBI feels like a way of addressing the incoming loss
| of jobs due to automation._
|
| A better way of doing that would be to allow automation
| to make the necessities of life drastically cheaper, so
| that the amount of work required to obtain them is
| drastically reduced. In the limit, if automation can
| produce all the necessities of life for everyone at
| essentially zero cost, then those necessities should
| simply be free, the way air is free now.
| viklove wrote:
| I could subsist while working only 10 hours a week, yet I
| usually put in 50+. Can you explain what's wrong with me?
| Or is everyone similar?
| thisiszilff wrote:
| A big part is anxiety about the future. You are not
| guaranteed economic opportunities in the future, so we
| make the most we have of the present to ensure we can
| provide for ourselves in the future.
|
| You also enjoy not subsisting. I enjoy not subsisting.
| jedberg wrote:
| Every experiment in UBI says otherwise. Direct cash grants
| usually lead people to do more work, because now they can do
| the work they enjoy.
|
| Also, look around groups of wealthy people. The ones who don't
| have to work anymore. Sure, some of them live a life of
| leisure, but many of them still work, because they get bored
| otherwise.
| kaffeemitsahne wrote:
| > _Every experiment in UBI says otherwise._
|
| Has even one of these been a permanent (for the recipients)
| experiment?
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| I don't know why they don't do this at $1K/mo for life for
| 30 people (and then study them qualitatively) instead of
| $250 one-time for 20,000. What is a one-time payment of
| $250 going to tell us about a UBI?
| EpicEng wrote:
| >Every experiment in UBI says otherwise.
|
| There has never been a test on a scale which would lead
| people to do it though. If you know you're part of a short
| lived experiment you're not quitting your job.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Yeah, I think it would have been better if they doled out
| the $5M as $1K/mo for life to 30 people and studied them
| qualitatively..
| BurningFrog wrote:
| People will always to things they enjoy. No one questions
| that.
|
| We have paid employment to get people to do things that _need
| to be done_!
| maxbond wrote:
| Are you familiar with the concept of Bullshit Jobs? In
| short, I'm not convinced that all or even most jobs are
| actually necessary.
|
| Surely it's reasonable to expect that people will be
| passionate about the things that actually need to be done,
| precisely because they are necessary. One of the most
| intense people I've ever met has cleaned SUPERFUND sites
| for decades. I'm not sure how well paid they are, but I am
| sure it isn't about the money. If they have trouble
| attracting people, they'll raise wages, and surely we can
| expect that what some people enjoy is making lots of money.
| Would it be so bad if working a shitty job no one would do
| voluntarily was well compensated, instead of poorly?
|
| In experiments with UBI, many of the people who quit do so
| to spend more time with their family - and keep in mind,
| domestic work is _work_ that is _necessary_ and incredibly
| valuable to society - or to retire earlier. Doesn't that
| sound reasonable? Do we really need to force people to work
| when they could be engaged in other activities valuable to
| society or to themselves? Wouldn't it be nice if there was
| more room for young people to be promoted?
|
| Another thing idea I've been toying with is the devil's
| bargain of trading UBI for eliminating minimum wage. I was
| watching a video about getting into locksmithing, and the
| speaker joked that if you made some faux pas, your
| potential employer would value you at $2/hr and send you
| packing.
|
| But that begged the question for me; what if I could work
| for $2/hr, with very few barriers, and get enough
| experience to earn more? In order to be hireable, I'd have
| to work at a negative rate, investing money in tools and
| locks to practice on. I have the privilege of having a
| family that could support me while I did something like
| that. But what if we could all do that, not because you won
| a socioeconomic lottery, but because our society was
| willing to invest in you and take a chance on you,
| regardless of your background?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| How many jobs exist for things that don't "need to be done"
| though?
|
| I'm aware the definition of "need" is a can of worms - but
| as an example, I know plenty of people who started doing
| call-center work in their early-20s while they "figure out
| what I want to do with their life" and by the time they
| know what they want to do (and it's definitely not call-
| center work!) they're trapped in their jobs, especially as
| after a few years they will have moved-out of their
| parents' home - so having to pay rent and cover their cost-
| of-living while they're getting started or experimenting
| with their own personal life projects (e.g. doing art, etc)
| is unfeasible - and don't suggest getting a loan either.
| Meanwhile people with wealthier and accommodating parents
| can afford to take their time living off their parents - I
| see this as an example of the inequality of opportunity in
| our society.
|
| Another example is the unseen and underreported unpaid work
| that exists, such as when a family has a child and the
| child has a disability that requires extra care: if they're
| a married couple then one of them would drop-out of their
| career to become a full-time - unpaid - caregiver. If it's
| a single--parent situation then the outcomes are often
| heartbreaking. This isn't the society I want to live in.
|
| UBI would mean the cost of labor for "McJob"s would rise -
| probably significantly (UBI would mean the end of the
| minimum wage, however) - but having fewer people doing jobs
| they don't want to do means greater net happiness and we'd
| see further rises in automation - which further raises GDP.
| I see employers using human labor for unrewarding work
| because it's cheaper than automation as a terrible local-
| maxima in our system. We just need to push past it to get
| to an even bigger maxima.
| bzb3 wrote:
| There are lots of jobs people don't enjoy. Who's going to do
| those?
|
| If they raise the salaries and start getting applicants,
| who's going to buy the much more expensive produce? They'd
| have to increase the amount of ubi, and there you have
| inflation.
| matz1 wrote:
| Automation, immigrant, increase pay.
| formercoder wrote:
| Some fold, some raise wages, some invest in automation.
| Inflation is possible, but not guaranteed.
| asdff wrote:
| You are assuming a business and industry is a god given
| right. If a business fails to get applicants, they need to
| raise wages or relocate to where there is labor. If they
| need more income to pay for these workers then they will
| charge more. If the price they charge for their goods or
| services is too high for the given level of demand, the
| business will just fold.
|
| And that's OK, there area a lot of parasitic zombie
| companies around that could use a culling, wasting peoples
| working years doing inane tasks rather than starting a
| project of their own and innovating. As they say, imagine
| if Mozart never held a violin but was busy working double
| shifts flipping burgers for 30 years instead.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| The robots, obviously! /s
| jedberg wrote:
| Non-citizens don't get UBI, so it would fall to immigrants.
|
| That's in fact the biggest issue with UBI -- it creates a
| de-facto class system.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| >>Every experiment in UBI says otherwise. Direct cash grants
| usually lead people to do more work, because now they can do
| the work they enjoy.
|
| But probably less "meaningful" work, in however society
| defines meaningful.
|
| >>Also, look around groups of wealthy people. The ones who
| don't have to work anymore. Sure, some of them live a life of
| leisure, but many of them still work, because they get bored
| otherwise.
|
| This is due to earning a return matching their effort. At
| some point, if enough income is withheld at that level,
| what's the point? Or, they will leave en-mass to countries
| more willing to employ entrepreneur muscle. These aren't
| anecdotes. Look at emigration from USSR, China, Venezuela or
| others of their scientists, professors, doctors, lawyers,
| financiers, etc.
| jedberg wrote:
| > But probably less "meaningful" work, in however society
| defines meaningful.
|
| Typically in these experiments the people start small
| businesses. When the risk of failure has a floor it makes
| you more likely to take on the risk.
|
| > At some point, if enough income is withheld at that
| level, what's the point?
|
| Most UBI proposals are VAT taxes. The more you consume the
| more you pay. So if you're a wealthy person, you will still
| see the return on your effort.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Why would the tax be regressive?
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Also, how can it be funded by vat anyways? We're talking
| about trillions per year to fund. Are you taxing cars
| 1000%? It doesn't add up.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| I think you're overestimating how much would be paid out.
| Taxes can go up on the employed by roughly what they
| receive in UBI, unemployed get UBI instead of
| unemployment benefits. It all balances out.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| This is not a VAT anymore. Why do UBI specialists
| sidestepped how this gets funded? What is there to hide?
| Mayzie wrote:
| The idea is that everyone receives a basic income, equivalent
| to a (hopefully) updated minimum wage. Then if people want
| extra money for luxuries, then you work a job which will pay
| you on top of your standard basic income.
|
| I imagine most people would continue working.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > everyone receives a basic income
|
| And, by definition, everybody who earns higher than the
| median wage will also receive a tax increase higher than the
| basic income they're being given "back".
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I don't think there is a strict definition, but there
| certainly would be a threshold in the bracket where taxes >
| UBI, but what is your point?
|
| That UBI is therefore worthless for everyone, because some
| people won't get it, in effect?
|
| There are many variations, but one benefit of continuing
| its issuance even if someone is in a high tax bracket is
| unemployment - one of many services that could go away if
| UBI were in place.
|
| If I make $200k, and lose my job, I don't apply for
| unemployment - I just get the UBI for that month to pay for
| expenses.
| ip26 wrote:
| If the point is to ensure everyone has a basic income even
| between jobs, but that nearly everyone will continue to work,
| and the purpose is to provide a safety net for the
| unemployed- think a minute before you reply- is it really
| _that_ different from unemployment insurance?
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| I disagree the purpose is that people will continue to
| work, but regardless, it's a much improved unemployment
| insurance because it doesn't go away when you do work, and
| so doesn't disincentivize work.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Even assuming that the vast majority of people would keep
| working to maintain their standard of living, there are major
| issues with UBI:
|
| 1) The incentive to enter the workforce is greatly reduced.
| Every high-school graduate would have the means to shack up
| with a few of their buddies and live the college lifestyle
| _indefinitely._ I 'm currently a productive adult, but only
| because there was no alternative. UBI is an alternative.
|
| 2) The nest-egg required to retire is greatly reduced. If a
| married couple is saving up for retirement with a retirement
| income of 60K, they're currently need $2,000,000 to retire
| (pre social security). If that same married couple is
| receiving 12K each in UBI, the required nest-egg is almost
| halved to $1,200,000. That means couple can retire a decade
| earlier than they previously could. This will see millions of
| people retiring during what would have been their most
| productive (i.e. tax-payingest) years.
|
| 3) Much like a shorter work week, UBI will be a tremendous
| competitive disadvantage for US goods and services. When the
| labor market inevitably shrinks, wages will necessarily rise.
| This will a competitive drag on exports of US goods and
| services.
|
| I'm not saying that these things are _bad_. They sound great
| for the individuals in question. But they will eventually
| hollow out the workforce.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Agreed... but the U.S. is about the pursuit of happiness,
| not the pursuit of a large workforce.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If the government provided food, shelter, and video games, I
| expect quite a few people would see no purpose in working. Also
| the surfers and backpackers.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I don't think UBI is meant to supply a cushy life. You may be
| able to afford a modest apartment and food, but what about a
| car? A nice bicycle? A nice phone? Books? Money to actually
| go out instead of eating soylent? Saving for buying a house
| or land?
|
| Many people who "go off the reservation" and travel/live
| mobile tend to settle down after a while.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Good for them. The point of work is to not have to anymore so
| you can follow your passions. We've invented machines that
| can do basically everything it takes to support human life.
| Seems like there should be a lot more people following
| passions now.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The point of work is to not have to anymore so you can
| follow your passions.
|
| So Bob needs to work so Fred can follow his passion for
| surfing and video games?
| nyhc99 wrote:
| Bob needs to work because Bob wants to buy nicer things
| and lead a fuller life than sitting around playing video
| games in a dirty shack like Fred.
|
| Bob's work isn't subsidizing Fred's lifestyle unfairly
| (at least under Yang's proposal) because the UBI is paid
| for by a tax on consumption (the VAT)
| matz1 wrote:
| The point is Bob doesn't need to work.
| burrows wrote:
| If no one is working, then who is being taxed to pay for
| the UBI?
| matz1 wrote:
| What do you mean no one is working ? There'll still be
| people working.
| loco5niner wrote:
| That would be Bob.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Bob is somebody who enjoys his job, or creating value, or
| material things, more than surfing and playing video
| games.
|
| The thought is that we have enough Bobs in the world now,
| and enough technology and infrastructure, that allowing
| the Bobs to be Bobs and the Freds to be Freds will still
| work out fine.
|
| (And I agree.)
| thisiszilff wrote:
| If Bob is a machine, then yes!
| seph-reed wrote:
| There's a gradient here. Such thing as "less work" should
| exist somewhere between "tons of work" and "no work."
| luckylion wrote:
| > We've invented machines that can do basically everything
| it takes to support human life.
|
| It's not about "support human life" as in "3000kcal a day".
| Nobody wants that. They want a comfy human life. We can do
| that as well, only we need other humans to work to make
| that happen. Still, good for them if enough people are
| found to voluntarily work more so they can work on self-
| actualization and enjoy hedonism.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> We 've invented machines that can do basically
| everything it takes to support human life._
|
| We have? We have machines that can do everything it takes
| to grow food, prepare it, ship it where it's needed, with
| no humans? We have machines that can build houses, cars,
| bicycles, and other forms of transportation, with no
| humans? We have machines that can make our clothes and all
| other necessary items with no humans? We have machines that
| can fix all our crumbling infrastructure with no humans?
|
| I think you are drastically underestimating the amount of
| human work that is needed just to keep the basic functions
| of society working. Let alone to provide all the nice to
| have things that we all want.
| viklove wrote:
| If we really still want them, the law of demand will help
| us out. The price will go up, and people will start
| working to be able to afford it.
|
| If it turns out that we don't actually want smartphones,
| new jeans, Starbucks coffee, etc -- then that's great
| too. We'll end up with a lot less pointless consumption
| and people can spend their lives chillin' with their
| buddies!
| loco5niner wrote:
| What will actually happen is the UBI money will FIRST go
| to smartphones, new jeans, Starbucks coffee, and the
| necessaries of life will come in second.
| seph-reed wrote:
| If someone does that, by all means stand back and call
| them an idiot. Let them suffer. It would actually be
| justified.
| hooande wrote:
| very few people wish to subsist. most humans want a lifestyle
| that is similar to or better than that of the people that they
| socialize with
| jpindar wrote:
| And most women want successful men.
|
| (You can think that that's a bad thing, but your thoughts
| won't change it.)
| aisengard wrote:
| You know, I thought so too, but I would probably instead just
| work _less_, maybe half time for half pay, I dunno. Seems like
| a great way to transform how we think about work and the
| economy. Fewer hours, when it's by choice, are pretty much
| always a good thing.
| golf1052 wrote:
| I doubt people could afford fancy tech gadgets on UBI. As
| others are saying most people would continue working because
| they want to achieve more. Do you really think Jeff Bezos or
| Bill Gates would quit what they're doing because of UBI?
|
| UBI just gives you more options, yes you can stop working and
| pursue passions which I think would be great if more people did
| that. You could also maybe get a less demanding job and
| volunteer more.
| grecy wrote:
| > _If the government starts giving me enough money each month
| to subsist .... then I 'll simply stop working_
|
| Australia has been doing it for decades. They have low
| unemployment. Your hypothesis is not borne out in real life.
| jpindar wrote:
| You do you, but... chicks dig guys with good careers.
|
| (You may think that's a bad thing, but it's still true.)
| Angostura wrote:
| You'd imagine that's what will happen, but you might be
| surprised.
| hartator wrote:
| Yes, it's that simple. It's already super expensive as is, it's
| gonna to be even more when half of the population stop working.
| We just not rich enough yet.
| tomconroy wrote:
| What will you do with your new free time?
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| Smoke pot and play video games while the fed prints me a
| paycheck. The American dream
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What will you do with your new free time?_
|
| I'd focus on accumulating non-monetary assets. Board seats,
| political connections, _et cetera_.
| lukemichals wrote:
| > taxes on my earnings
|
| Yangs proposal was a VAT, which wouldn't be a tax on your
| earnings. Am I off here?
| eanzenberg wrote:
| So it's regressive? Even better..
| lukemichals wrote:
| Direct from yangs site
| (https://www.yang2020.com/policies/value-added-tax/)
|
| > This VAT would vary based on the good to which it's
| applied, with staples having a lower rate or being
| excluded, and luxury goods having a higher rate.
|
| That's the beauty of a VAT. It can be tuned to reach the
| desired result.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _That 's the beauty of a VAT. It can be tuned to reach
| the desired result._
|
| But who will do the tuning? My guess, as a former
| corporate tax lawyer, is that it would be done by
| industry lobbyists, seeking preferential treatment for
| their clients' products.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Well, duh. How else do communists exert control and
| power?
| chillacy wrote:
| Yea that's the problem with tuning these things, same
| with tarrifs, just leads to companies having a rational
| reason to spend money on lobbyists. IMO the VAT would be
| much simpler as a flat tax than trying to tune it, but
| it's not as popular with people who then complain when
| the price of goods go up (despite the fact that you'd
| have to be spending something like $120k a year in order
| to offset the losses of a 10% VAT with 100% pass-through
| (in Europe it's only 50%) with a $12k/year UBI)
| hhs wrote:
| If interested, this provides a brief historical perspective, with
| the pros and cons of UBI:
| https://news.stanford.edu/2020/03/24/moment-universal-basic-...
| actualanswer wrote:
| This doesn't provide any view into pros/cons tho. Mostly
| statements about what happened and is happening. Not very
| useful from that perspective.
| hhs wrote:
| Please note that there's a box down on the left of that page,
| which is called "Stanford scholar explores pros, cons of
| 'basic income'", with the info and may be useful. This is the
| box link: https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/08/stanford-
| scholar-explor...
| throwaway_jobs wrote:
| I don't think there is any good way to _test_ UBI at any small
| scale, I think there needs to be a critical mass of people who
| can pay their housing and food costs how society and economic
| activity would be reshaped under such a system.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| US centric opinion:
|
| Social Security and Medicare are already UBI at large scale,
| but age tested (62 is the minimum age, 70 the max for social
| security benefits, age 65 qualified you for Medicare, US
| universal healthcare for seniors). Caveat: you needed to have
| worked and earned certain amounts to qualify for Medicare and
| your benefits level.
|
| To test at small scale, you'd need an endowment that would use
| the investment returns to pay folks their UBI, and then payroll
| taxes that would include OSDI so they'd gracefully land onto
| Social Security and Medicare when they reach the age that
| qualified them. Pick small cohorts: students in their early
| 20s, some middle age folks mid career, and folks near the end
| of their career in dead end industries (ie coal). Observe and
| report.
|
| If you can "cross the chasm" (see: companies going remote first
| after being forced to see if it can be done with COVID), it
| then becomes PR getting an audience with the Fed and Congress
| to rejigger monetary and fiscal policy to print and distribute
| accordingly. Can't see we can't print, money printer is running
| exceedingly fast right now [1], but can we put that money in
| the pockets of average citizens instead of simply inflating
| asset values of the richest Americans? That's the question.
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL
| bhupy wrote:
| A small nit: "Original Medicare" isn't really a UBI because
| you don't really get to choose your healthcare. A key benefit
| of a UBI is that the government provides cash to buy goods &
| services, rather than providing the goods & services
| themselves. Medicare is a government-run service, where the
| service is a combination of catastrophic insurance, cost-
| sharing, and general payment.
|
| Medicare Part C, or Medicare Advantage, is much closer to a
| UBI than "Original Medicare". Nearly 40% of Medicare
| beneficiaries are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Fair context to provide. In a previous comment [1], I argue
| the case for keeping both UBI and single payer healthcare.
|
| Cash alone makes a poor safety net, because humans are
| humans.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23246811
| bhupy wrote:
| Agree, but I'd push back on the "single payer healthcare"
| bit and say that "Single payer" is not the only way to
| deliver universal healthcare. Germany, Switzerland,
| Netherlands, Singapore all have thriving multi-payer
| systems. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, ALL
| insurance is private. In Singapore, while the government
| covers catastrophic care, 70% of total health
| expenditures are private.
|
| The common theme is that there is some degree of
| government intervention and regulation, but having the
| government be the sole payer is definitely _an_ approach,
| but it 's by no means the _only_ approach, nor even the
| _best_ approach.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Seems like nonsense to me to say 'this is universal income
| just except it's not universal.' If you take away the
| 'universal' then you're missing the _entire_ point.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is policy and PR hacking in lieu of having incredibly
| deep pockets. Sorry to tell you that real life is messy.
| Think of it as growth hacking. This is a sales endeavor.
| You must sell that the current form of capitalism is
| fundamentally broken.
|
| This is no different than contributing to the "right"
| Congressional candidates with few dollars so they control
| hundreds of billions of dollars of policy (or in this case,
| trillions of dollars). This isn't anything new or weird.
| NGOs face this issue all the time, having to prove out
| models before they'll get gov or foundation funding.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But you can't prove anything about universal income
| without the universal part. As without it it's not the
| same thing and we don't know if it'll have the same
| effects.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You can approximate. Close enough. It's going to be
| impossible to implement without testing the concept.
|
| I'm not here to convince you, and if you're not a
| policymaker or the Fed, I don't have to.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But the 'universal' part is the main thing people
| including policy makers have an issue with, and that's
| the bit not being tested.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Ehh, India is dipping their toes in without going full
| monty. It can be done progressively.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23258277 (HN: Indian
| farmers to get direct cash benefits)
| renewiltord wrote:
| So your posterior probabilities on most things will shift
| zero post intervention? Interesting.
|
| I'm a UBI opponent, a short term HM proponent, but I
| think my posterior probabilities would shift depending on
| the size of the effect and the duration over which the
| experiment was performed.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| You cannot test it at small scale, but it _also_ works at small
| scale, so that 's a nice bonus to dupe naysayers with.
| mc32 wrote:
| Maybe a small economy somewhere. There are small city-sized
| nation-states here and there around the world --both in
| industrialized areas and not so industrialized areas. They
| could try it in both and see what's what. $5MM isn't enough
| though.
| gpm wrote:
| So... let's say 500k people, 10k a year, 10 years, that's 50
| billion dollars.
|
| That's... not a small test. That's a small city deciding to
| go all in on trying it.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yes, but you need a self-contained economy to test and
| prove things out.
| monocasa wrote:
| There are no self contained economies anymore.
| mc32 wrote:
| Can I apply for gov benefits from a neighboring staate I
| don't have permanent resident status?
| monocasa wrote:
| That doesn't make it a "self contained economy"
| mc32 wrote:
| I think for the purposes of UBI it's enough of a
| criterion.
|
| Implicitly I was contesting it against say trying it for
| a county or other political subdivision like
| state/province/canton. By state I meant sovereign
| state/nation.
| Proven wrote:
| Really? Just like Krugman's QE!
|
| How am I going to get back my devalued savings once we find out
| it doesn't work, all savers have been ruined and fiat money has
| no value?
|
| There's no need to test it on any scale, including small,
| because it can't work.
| MiroF wrote:
| The central bank exists to ensure that your fears here are
| misplaced.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Savers aren't entitled to a return. No one is entitled to
| fiat holding or increasing in value. The utility value of
| capital is declining, plain and simply.
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/700-year-decline-of-
| interes...
|
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/ke.
| ..
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INTDSRJPM193N
|
| http://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/marketinfo/official_interest.
| ..
|
| https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/statistics/search-interest--
| ex...
| beamatronic wrote:
| It almost seems like the best use of cash is to use it as a
| down payment for a loan on an appreciating asset (like a
| house)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| What happens if the house no longer appreciates?
| hhs wrote:
| It's possible, Y Combinator Research seems to be doing just
| this with a randomized controlled trial study in two states:
| https://basicincome.ycr.org/our-plan
| gamegoblin wrote:
| I believe what OP is getting at is you need a significant
| portion of a community to be receiving UBI to truly transform
| the local economy.
|
| To use an example the Yang often uses: It may not be
| economically viable to set up a bakery in some small dying
| town. But if _everyone_ in that town were receiving UBI, it
| might become viable, due to a change in the town 's spending
| habits.
| burrows wrote:
| > But if everyone in that town were receiving UBI, it might
| become viable, due to a change in the town's spending
| habits.
|
| The change being that everyone is now spending money earned
| by someone else.
| Descartes1 wrote:
| Exactly
|
| If any subgroup is given extra capital, the test will appear to
| work. This is patently obvious to anyone with half a brain.
|
| Wealth is always and everywhere a measure of disparity.
| asdff wrote:
| We are currently with unemployment doing a great UBI
| experiment. Lots of people are earning more with unemployment
| than before. The benefits are only a year, but I'm willing to
| bet these people take their time finding work if it means a pay
| cut.
|
| California is a perfect place to test these sorts of public
| welfare and social safety net initiatives. It's the 5th largest
| economy in the world, and medi-Cal already covers a third of
| the population, it only need be expanded.
| twic wrote:
| What if you did it in some moderately isolated place, like
| Alaska?
|
| Alaska already has almost-universal not-quite-basic income:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| The annual dividend is around $1000. I wouldn't call this UBI
| exactly.
| twic wrote:
| Hence "not-quite-basic"!
| hadtodoit wrote:
| Many people actually survive on that one check. Alaskans
| are fiercely independent for the most part, and those
| living outside the main cities are typically self-
| sustainable. They own their land, hunt for their meat, grow
| their veggies, trade for what they don't have, and spend
| whatever money they do have on the essential tools to
| sustain that.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| How would that work in a city where an acre costs
| millions?
| hadtodoit wrote:
| Unlikely that someone paying a million an acre would want
| to hunt for their meals. Alaska works because people are
| self-reliant but community bonds are incredibly strong.
| Beyond a certain population density, that type of
| community doesn't work.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| You need a lot of available land to live off the land.
| This may work in Alaska but in other states this can't be
| done on a large scale.
| gowld wrote:
| > trade
|
| That's income, even if it's not denominated in dollars.
|
| Presumably they also own land and a house, which is
| wealth.
|
| The point behind the UBI concept that it does it's thing
| even if you have no income because you love somewhere
| where you can't farm your own food and have your own land
| with your own house in it.
| luckylion wrote:
| How do you handle people wanting to move to Alaska? And how
| do you get Alaskans on board for paying higher taxes to fund
| it?
|
| If you're not asking them to fund it, you're not testing UBI,
| you're testing "if an external entity provides money to a
| community without asking for anything in return, will that be
| cool?"
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Were the US Coronavirus payouts not a small-scale test of UBI
| in themselves?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Not really, the central premise of UBI is that its recurring
| allowing you to plan for and adapt to the income. This was
| just a bandaid for a financial disaster.
|
| What is interesting about the payouts is that we magically
| made the money for them while also magically making the money
| for a ton of other stuff. Obviously the scale of one time vs
| recurring is vastly different but I feel like this does go a
| ways towards proving its possible.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| No more so than the 2008 stimulus checks. Both programs were
| non-universal and under both the number of dollars sent to
| eligible recipients depended on their incomes.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Oh maybe I'm mistaken. I was under the impression that the
| COVID payouts were universal.
| karatestomp wrote:
| The cutoffs before payments started to taper off--not
| even get cut off entirely yet, but drop--were pretty damn
| high. Much higher than I expected when they started
| talking about it. Not by SV or NY professional-class wage
| earner standards, but very high for normal people. It
| wasn't universal but it wasn't too far off, either.
| kitotik wrote:
| I think the idea that it _needs_ to be tested before just
| jumping in and trying it _somewhere_ is just a way to state
| that you don't support it. Which is fine, but just say that.
|
| If there had been the same testing requirements around say
| Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism we'd never have seen any
| of them rolled out.
|
| At some point you have to buy in to the ethos and goals and be
| prepared to adapt along the way.
| [deleted]
| toohotatopic wrote:
| Why do you need a critical mass? Everybody with an income can
| try it at any given moment:
|
| Find one or more persons who _you_ want to support and support
| them with a basic income. If UBI works, they will also start
| supporting other people. Sooner or later, you have an economy
| of people who support each other with UBI.
|
| Chances are that you are unlucky and your choice of seeding
| persons wasn't good. But for science, that doesn't matter. If
| others copy that approach, sooner or later, a working economy
| will emerge - if UBI works.
|
| There is no need to establish UBI in an area even though it
| helps. Thanks to the internet, the economic connections can all
| be organized online.
|
| *edit: marked the _you_
| sokoloff wrote:
| UBI is no good if it's not durable and reliable to the
| recipient.
|
| If you imagine that UBI would allow people to live with a
| lower level of stress around starvation, you have to imagine
| that they would want to rely on that income a decade from
| now. Saying "find a rich benefactor to decide to give money
| away" doesn't reasonably test anything meaningful about UBI.
| I can tell you that people will generally be happier if you
| give them money one time. Don't need much experimentation to
| validate that hypothesis...
| toohotatopic wrote:
| I haven't said 'find a rich benefactor', but 'be the
| benefactor'.
|
| There is no need to be rich. Spouses stay at home and are
| not worried if their partner has a regular job. It doesn't
| have to work for everybody. For starters, find somebody who
| can handle the risk of you losing your job.
|
| Of course people are happier if they get rich. But that's
| not what UBI is about. The question is: do people need a
| monetary buffer to get on in life and become more
| profitable so that society benefits as a whole?
|
| If that theory is true, then supporting one or two persons
| will lead to them making more money and being able to
| support one or two persons in return by themselves. That's
| a system that can grow, if UBI works.
|
| So, whoever believes in UBI: start supporting one person,
| and see what will happen.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Anyone who is contemplating durably changing their life
| predicated on the receipt of basic income is in the
| situation of "find a benefactor".
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure, but by flipping the direction, you can just pick an
| arbitrary person, set up a trust fund that only disburses
| a certain amount and set this person up for life. If you
| have 10 people, each contribute $100k, that's a $1
| million fund. Fund a person in Nebraska for life with the
| fund for $36k a year with an annual rate of return of 4%
| (fairly conservative).
|
| That person is guaranteed the durable benefactor and you
| can see if their behaviour changes and if they are
| enhanced through this.
| hobs wrote:
| You mean like children? Children need you to support them
| for years as a buffer before they can get on with life.
|
| Society benefits as a whole when we foster the
| development of proper adults. If the development to
| making them a net contributor is not done yet, why would
| we stop?
| mydongle wrote:
| Hey, that's angle I've never thought about before.
|
| We support children for years and all we expect them to
| do is go to school. While a lot of kids could decide to
| just not work and be taken care of by their family, the
| vast majority want to work anyway, if only for the fact
| they want to move out and build their own family.
|
| This may be the key. UBI + Making people go through
| further education so that they can have the foundation of
| knowledge and skills to be able to work. Right now, we
| have a lot of people who go through years of school and
| in the end it amounts to nothing because no one will give
| them a real job unless they had the money and a stable
| environment that allowed them to go to fancy universities
| instead of being forced to work to provide for
| themselves. This is a 3 angle attack. UBI +
| education/training + lowering the barrier for people
| being able to get a job. With UBI, you will have
| substantially less people desperate to get any job, so
| the supply of workers is no longer so high that companies
| can afford to be picky, because people will be able to
| tell those companies to go fuck themselves.
| wyre wrote:
| UBI+further education sounds like a great idea. After
| graduating people won't be stressed about finding a job
| to help pay for their mounds of student loan debt and
| will have the knowledge to work on projects that they
| find meaningful.
| mydongle wrote:
| That's right. People hear about UBI and lament how people
| are going to become lazy and quit working, but they don't
| ask themselves why some people would stop working. They
| don't think that maybe some jobs are not worth doing
| unless you are at the threat of poverty and homelessness
| from not working. We need to reevaluate if we want to
| continue this horrible system where a class of people are
| denigrated to working slave tier jobs with poor wages and
| working conditions so that the classes above them can
| enjoy their first world lives.
| daenz wrote:
| I've proposed this very idea to UBI supporters on many
| occasions, and they always seem to dodge and say it will only
| work if everyone does it through the government. It's
| apparently an all-or-nothing situation where the outcome of
| failure is catastrophic economic collapse. Doesn't exactly
| inspire confidence.
| bt1a wrote:
| Trickle up, baby. Man I love Andrew Yang and what his mission is
| with Humanity Forward. Good move, Jack.
| hadtodoit wrote:
| Same here but I really wish he wouldn't kowtow every time some
| wackjob group is screaming at him. He took a very moderate and
| reasonable stance on a lot of contentious topics during his
| campaign then rolled them back within a day of getting lit up
| by twitter trolls. I think he lost a large section of centrist
| voters by appearing spineless.
|
| He took the best policies from the left and right, but also
| seemed obligated to tow party lines a lot of the time rather
| than offer up better alternatives. I wish he would have run
| third party, he could have taken a lot of moderate votes from
| President Trump. The democrats didn't stand a chance of winning
| this election, at the very least he would have sent a message
| to the next generation that there are other options.
| [deleted]
| bt1a wrote:
| Yang definitely waffled on MFA and appeared to not support it
| towards the end. That was something of him that I was
| disappointed - I couldn't understand why he didn't realize
| that MFA is the way to go. I do wonder if he waffled on it to
| retain support from people further to the right.
|
| That said, I actually think Yang's ideas are going to
| reverberate throughout political discourse over the next
| decade. Similar to how Bernie pushed the base range of the
| Democratic party to the left, Yang shed light on some great
| issues that will plague us. For example, what are going to do
| about the massive loss of employment due to automation? Are
| we going to attempt to retrain these people? That's
| historically not been very successful.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| >I couldn't understand why he didn't realize that MFA is
| the way to go.
|
| Maybe because that's not a fact. MFA might not be the way
| to go. This isn't a simple binary issue.
| andrekandre wrote:
| no, he waffled
|
| in interviews he literally said, when challenged, that
| "mfa isnt actually a bill" and that "mfa to means xyz"
| when actually mfi _is_ a bill and specifically defined as
| a policy not some ambigous goal of "getting everyone
| covered, lets discuss how to get there"
|
| i was deeply dissapointed in him after that...
| ycombinete wrote:
| What is MFA?
| eachro wrote:
| Medicare For All I'm assuming
| hadtodoit wrote:
| Quarantine has accelerated forecasted job loss. Whether we
| return to baseline by next year, a lot of companies are
| going to take this opportunity to lean out without fear of
| backlash.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| Retraining is not the answer (and I don't know what is).
| Many of the jobs killed by automation were things people
| could command a reasonably high salary to do, but did not
| need extensive training for (these are referred to as "good
| jobs"). Offering the same salary (or even more), but
| requiring multiple years of training, just isn't going to
| fly with these people.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Retraining is part of the answer. For professional jobs
| (in the classic sense) continuous training is a core
| tenant of remaining current in the field and if
| applicable maintaining licensure. The faster technology
| moves, the more everyone should be thinking about how
| careers will be in a constant state a flux. Not just
| retraining from a factory job to some service job, but
| every few years basically having a role that has morphed
| into something new. We need institutions, practices, and
| norms that reflect the new normal of high-technical
| change.
|
| Many historical blue-collar jobs that have been automated
| (or even things like farming before it) were much higher-
| skill than most people give credit for. It is just that
| the training and general knowledge available to perform
| well were more ambiently available. An example today is
| working with standard business software. You don't get
| trained in office and excel, you get trained on how they
| are used in the company's specific workflows. Companies
| also had more on the job training and apprenticeships.
|
| So I also don't know what do with the wave of truckers
| that will be automated away with self-driving big-rigs
| (presuming that happens) but I think the future is one
| where we don't actually have as many folks dedicated to
| one line-of-work where such a jarring transition is
| necessary. Or perhaps the corollary, that we should aim
| for that more dynamic approach to prevent further
| disruption of big discontinuities
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Creating new jobs is the answer. The question is whether
| you think rich CEOs and capital owners or a wide,
| empowered middle class are the best to come up with those
| jobs.
|
| Tech should know better. The best thing Apple et al. ever
| did for their _platforms_ was to open them to the
| ingenuity of the masses, and keep the barriers to entry
| low enough that they didn 't discourage new ideas from
| blossoming. The market economy isn't an end unto itself;
| it's a _platform_ on which goods are developed and needs
| can be identified and met.
| gnicholas wrote:
| If you're trying to build a case for UBI in general, it seems odd
| to do your experiment during a very non-standard time. What works
| or doesn't work in a pandemic may yield very different results in
| more normal times.
| aSplash0fDerp wrote:
| I think developed countries will adopt a "Work on Demand" model
| that allows workers to order work and have it delivered and
| picked up (anywhere in their state, county or city) using the
| advancements of self driving vehicles. It compliments the trends
| currently underway with WFH/WHA and the same-day delivery
| aspirations of a few e-tailers.
|
| UBI might be a transition to WoD, but the infrastructure,
| education and political models should go ahead and calibrate to
| the flexibility of the labor market(s).
|
| The COL argument should revolve around someone only having to
| work 20 hours a week to maintain their lifestyle vs someone who
| has to work 40 hours for the same thing.
| tgv wrote:
| So literally a solution in search of a problem.
|
| A living income guarantee has my blessing, but UBI doesn't. It's
| either too low, and there's still need for welfare, unemployment
| benefit, etc., or so high that the (unpredictable) consequences
| can completely overwhelm the advantages.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| That's a strong claim. What makes you think so?
| birdyrooster wrote:
| The problem part we got down: We all need a living income and
| the current system cannot employ all with a living income.
| There are many people who are fully employed and cannot make
| ends meet. Many others still cannot leave their employer to
| improve or change their skills without losing their housing,
| healthcare, or food security -- short of being crucified on
| higher education debt. This hurts everyone.
| based2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Pilot_programs_an...
| ck2 wrote:
| how about access to health care first
|
| no, we can't do both at the same time, we can't even get half the
| population to wear a simple mask in the middle of a pandemic
| lancesells wrote:
| This is what has me not liking UBI. It makes zero sense to
| figure out how to pay a monthly stipend that comes at an
| astronomical cost but not healthcare.
|
| Free healthcare would make the country smarter, more
| productive, healthier, better economy, etc.
|
| UBI looks to me like a very bad idea that takes away power from
| citizens over the long term. I think it would be very ugly 50
| years later. Get convicted of a felony? Lose your UBI. Born in
| an enemy country? Lose your UBI. Late on your credit card
| payment? We'll just take it out of your UBI.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| Maybe he can use it to endorse another moderate Democrat who
| would never dream of enacting such a policy.
| monadic2 wrote:
| > moderate Democrat
|
| What the fuck is this bullshit?
|
| Edit: apparently people like politician dick served up by the
| media.
| [deleted]
| jdmoreira wrote:
| I certainly don't want to be mean and I don't think that money
| should be how we measure people's value but I find it a bit odd
| that Andrew Yang claim to fame is being some kind of successful
| entrepreneur and yet his net worth is around 1 million USD. Much
| less than Obama for example.
|
| I'm also talking as a non-us resident that doesn't know much
| about him except I've googled him a few times.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Looks like he made his million on his successful startup
| (making him a successful entrepreneur) and then proceeded to
| start a non-profit, which by definition should not make him
| exponentially richer.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I could see UBI as an alternative to federal government spend.
|
| E.g. every time I hear about the U.S. sending billions to the
| middle east, I wonder how much more effectively it could be spent
| in the hands of thousands upon thousands of americans.
|
| It's almost like implementing something closer to direct
| democracy instead of representative republic democracy in regards
| to spending...
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Yeah, I think UBI should/would/could actually be very popular
| from a small government perspective as well.
|
| What if a republican ran on the platform that "if elected, I
| will make it a law that 10% of all federal revenue must be
| directly distributed equally to all citizens. Then is grows 5%
| a year until it hits 80% in 2036!"?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| As Eisenhower put it
|
| _Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket
| fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who
| hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
| clothed._
|
| _This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
| spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
| scientists, the hopes of its children..._
|
| _This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under
| the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a
| cross of iron._
| stevens32 wrote:
| Beautiful quote. Thanks for sharing.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It's a heck of a speech, made after Stalin died
|
| https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-
| speeche...
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| My biggest concern with UBI is the massive inflation that it will
| cause.
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| >> Yang says Humanity Forward plans to immediately distribute
| Dorsey's contribution in the form of small cash grants of $250 to
| nearly 20,000 people who've lost their jobs or taken an economic
| hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
|
| So money based on certain non-universal conditions?
|
| Isn't this one of the root problems? People cannot accept a truly
| universal system - you've already got too much; that guy lives in
| the wrong part of the country; you have too much education;
| they're not citizens...
|
| Bill Gates has stated he doesn't have enough money to tackle all
| major areas and make significant advances; then guys like Yang
| want to use far less money for even bigger mandates. This just
| looks like a way for rich guys to pick very specific winners.
|
| UBI seems like it would be the most powerful vote-buying weapon
| ever created in the hands of any government given the opportunity
| to implement it.
| [deleted]
| fullshark wrote:
| > UBI seems like it would be the most powerful vote-buying
| weapon ever created in the hands of any government given the
| opportunity to implement it.
|
| What's the difference between debating over UBI and
| increasing/decreasing taxes with regard to buying votes? Truly
| universal as you say there's only one question re: UBI what's
| the monthly payment? With tax code there's a million different
| loopholes and special interest carve outs etc.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| To be fair, there are a few other questions...
|
| Is it monthly or weekly/bi-weekly/quarterly/annually?
|
| Does universal include children under 18? Non-citizens? If
| so, for the same amount?
|
| Can you borrow against your UBI or allow others to take
| liens?
|
| How do you actually register and get the money?
|
| But that's about it I can think of!
| kzrdude wrote:
| The citizen question is so very hard, because in practice,
| non-citizens are numerous and very vulnerable. Cementing
| UBI for citizens only, would construct a gulf state like
| two tier society.
|
| Eligibility for the UBI will always be contested. Would it
| not make it even harder for immigration laws as well?
| jpindar wrote:
| You can't buy a sandwich with a piece of paper that says your
| taxes are going to be lower next year (especially when you
| don't have much income to be taxed).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Its troubling to imagine the negotiations that might get
| restrictions put in place, to further political wrangles. If
| the 'U' is not there, then its just another program to manage
| with a huge bureaucracy. Instead of the great leveler and
| simplifier it could be.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Because the earnings part comes before the tax part, which is
| the proper order of operations. In order to produce earnings,
| our system dictates that you do something economically
| useful. That's not a perfect system, but it has produced the
| modern economy and for all its flaws, no economy in history
| has produced as much wealth as exists today.
|
| I am highly skeptical of UBI. The U.S. is the last place that
| should try it, it should be experimented on in a country like
| New Zealand or Italy... not on an economy like the U.S.,
| which could bring down world trade if UBI ends in economic
| catastrophe, such as hyperinflation, which is a very real
| possibility.
| chillacy wrote:
| I see UBI as more of a response to the existing conditional
| welfare system which already exists and circumvents this
| system in the most perverse way where you can make _more_
| money on disability than doing something economically
| useful. At least with UBI you can eliminate these incentive
| gaps.
|
| Doesn't have to be UBI either, a NIT could do the same
| thing, maybe even the EITC as long as it keeps the earning
| curve monotonic.
| vkou wrote:
| > Because the earnings part comes before the tax part,
| which is the proper order of operations. In order to
| produce earnings, our system dictates that you do something
| economically useful. That's not a perfect system, but it
| has produced the modern economy and for all its flaws, no
| economy in history has produced as much wealth as exists
| today.
|
| It should be noted that if it weren't for the energy we are
| extracting from fossil fuels, we'd all be subsistence
| peasants eating mud, and shoveling cow shit with our hands
| for a living.
|
| The economic system is a rounding error, compared to the
| colossal increase in wealth unlocked by cheap access to
| energy.
| malandrew wrote:
| cheap access to energy is merely a lever for allowing
| people to be even more economically useful. By itself,
| cheap access to energy is worth nothing.
| asdff wrote:
| It seems like people would like it, being that it's in their
| own interest, but you should hear how much people today
| disregard social welfare programs. Either throwing their hands
| up in the air that it would be impossibly expensive, and/or
| bread would become $20.
| BosunoB wrote:
| I think that people can accept a universal program, but
| legislators and the think tanks that govern their policy
| cannot. The point of Dorsey's funding is to provide high
| quality data to bolster the policy, and this might have that
| effect even if, like you say, the payments aren't universal.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| So... basically people who lost their jobs to COVID are winners
| in your mind?
| arcticfox wrote:
| It's not bad, it just misses a lot of the benefit of 'basic'
| income. For example, my wife had just finished her education
| and was looking for a job when COVID hit. She's randomly just
| as hosed as everyone that actually lost an existing job, but
| qualifies for none of the same relief.
|
| The benefit of the 'universal basic' part of UBI is that it
| just washes away all edge cases, and it's pretty hard to feel
| like you've been wronged by it.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Andrew Yang's Humanity Forward organization is not the
| nation's government. They don't have the resources to make
| something universal. That's one of the reasons he ran for
| president, was so he could do that. The people weren't
| ready this time, but maybe in 4 years, when he's probably
| going to run again, they'll be more willing to give him a
| shot.
|
| But right now he is doing what he can and working with
| much, much more limited resources, so it only makes sense
| to target people who are in immediate need because of the
| crisis.
|
| There are a lot more people than even that 20,000 that are
| struggling right now (40 million people have lost their job
| since the start of the pandemic, in the US), but if he
| divided $5,000,000 by 40 million people, it'd only give
| each person 12 cents, which doesn't help any single
| individual enough to make any difference, while
| simultaneously turning into a much more of a logistical
| nightmare.
|
| For example he had Sam Harris on his Yang Speaks podcast
| recently, and Yang said that to a certain extent he
| sympathizes on how long the stimulus checks are getting out
| to people because he's been giving money out himself and
| it's been difficult to pin down current addresses for the
| people most in need.
|
| So what is it you're expecting him to do with that $5
| million instead, that would make it more universal?
| zdragnar wrote:
| > That's one of the reasons he ran for president, was so
| he could do that.
|
| That requires an act of congress. Literally the only
| thing the president would have to do with it is signing a
| piece of paper.
|
| Running for president gave the idea a bit of a platform,
| and just cemented the idea as so far out there that no-
| one need ever take it seriously.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think the point is that giving 250 on 20,000 people is
| a poor way to " build the case for a universal basic
| income".
|
| It is not a test case for any of the purported advantages
| for UBI, and actively undermines many of the fundamental
| principles of UBI.
|
| Hell, the money would be better spent on lobbying.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| I'm not the OP, but I would like to see some UBI studies
| that are at least permanent (per participant), if not
| universal.
|
| It'd be a lot more interesting to me to see what happens
| when 30 people get $1,000/mo for the rest of their lives
| than what 20,000 people do with an extra $250 once.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You could run a test case in a low income country where 5
| million goes a long way. For example, the median per-
| capita income in India is $600/yr[1]. You could use this
| money to provide 3,000 people with $300/yr for 5 years.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/median-
| income-by...
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| True.. I'd probably rather do $120/yr for 3,000 people
| for life (as opposed to just five years). Assuming $120
| is equivalent to $12,000 in the US, and for life is going
| to be more interesting than even five years. And at 7%
| interest you could afford this forever off the $5M
| endowment.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Give Directly does that. The organization is all about
| giving money to the extreme poor, and they're
| outstandingly effective at doing this. At the same time,
| they structure their giving activities as RCT's at
| varying levels (formerly household-based, now full
| villages AIUI) so they're also creating very valuable
| research output about these issues.
| tootie wrote:
| This is way for Yang to stay in the public eye and Dorsey to
| burnish his image with the progressive crowd while
| simultaneously amplifying the worst of the far right in his day
| job.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That isn't exactly new politically for better or worse and
| essentially "bug report closed - a feature not a bug".
| Fundamentally that is what more democratic systems are - more
| distributive of political power and interests to please. They
| are supposed to "buy" votes by pleasing the voters! Every human
| has their price but that price may not be monetary. Of course
| all ways are not equal in terms of wisdom or morality.
|
| Athenian democracy was rather different but they had voted for
| several wars of conquest to enrich themselves and the rowers
| (the job was higher paid than a soldier due to scarcity and
| militarily you both want better performance of professionals vs
| slaves and for them to be allies of soldiers during naval
| boardings instead of slaves who rebel for freedom).
| grayfaced wrote:
| Even universal has winners and losers. How do you deal with
| different cost of livings between Bay Area and Mississippi?
|
| If the UBI is not adjusted and covers living expenses in cheap
| areas but not expensive areas, then people might decide to live
| cheaply without a job. That risks creating slums.
|
| If it's adjusted to locality, then areas will grow and dwindle
| based on accuracy of those adjustment tables. Which would turn
| those tables overtly political.
| jbc1 wrote:
| If you're treating people wanting to live cheaply without a
| job as a negative situation that should be avoided, then I
| don't think you're in a mindset to be evaluating UBI
| specifics correctly. You should just be wholesale against it.
| The whole point is to free people from wage slavery. You're
| worried that it will work!
|
| On an even broader level though, cost of living differences
| being taken in to account in anything like this seems odd. I
| read it as the equivalent of "but what about people who want
| Ferrari's not Honda's!?" When it seems like others see it as
| "what about people who have expensive to treat medical
| conditions?"
|
| COL differences aren't some arbitrary accident. You're paying
| more to live somewhere more desirable.
| malandrew wrote:
| "wage slavery" is such a disingenuous weasel word term.
| There's no slavery involved at all. Involvement is purely
| voluntary and you're free to leave at any time.
| rapnie wrote:
| And go to the food banks?
| Avicebron wrote:
| Here we go again. People are not always in a position to
| leave a job. People are living paycheck to paycheck and
| not able to get other jobs. You're being disingenuous.
| chillwaves wrote:
| People are free to move to lower cost of living areas. In
| fact, many would argue this is a benefit of UBI and will
| bring much needed economic resources to under populated parts
| of the country.
|
| Not everyone needs to live in the Bay Area.
|
| COL adjustment to UBI would be a huge mistake and undermine
| the entire concept.
| kenhwang wrote:
| I think it's a double edged sword. Encouraging people to
| minimize their COL and spend the money on underinvested
| areas of the country is fantastic for decreasing the wealth
| gap.
|
| But the other likely outcome is drastic COL inflation in
| low COL areas which adversely impacts them significantly
| more.
| Avicebron wrote:
| But if everyone including those in the low COL area was
| getting UBI then it should equalize no?
| kenhwang wrote:
| I believe so, but the economic impact isn't well
| understood yet.
|
| The UBI experiments so far have shown that it does have
| an inflationary effect (which causes COL to go up), and
| at the same time, incomes decrease as secondary earners
| opt for UBI instead of working. People overall are much
| happier, but their financial situation gets worse.
| exclusiv wrote:
| Yes. Colorado hates on Texans for scooping up real estate
| and driving up prices and taxes. And Texans hate on
| Californians for scooping up their real estate. You can't
| have it all. And if you do, it won't last forever. Such
| is life.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Low COL areas are so widespread in practice that no real
| inflation would occur, even if all the money was spent
| there. Urban living is the kind that's scarce and
| expensive.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > People are free to move to lower cost of living areas. I
|
| That's probably NOT what is going to happen if you
| implement UBI. Rather people complaining UBI is too low for
| the place they are currently living in. Well known
| phenomenon.
| alexbanks wrote:
| I haven't spent a ton of time thinking about UBI. Can you
| explain how our current society doesn't already have slums?
| Or how UB would increase them?
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