6 ms·

When people on the far left and the far right agree, they're usually onto something. My favorite examples are the NSA spying stuff, and this. Lefties hate the

by Frondo 11y ago

When people on the far left and the far right agree, they're usually onto something. My favorite examples are the NSA spying stuff, and this. Lefties hate the NSA spying and love a universal basic income because the spying tilts the power away from the people, and the income tilts toward the people. Righties (well, go far right enough) hate the NSA spying and love a universal income because of government overreach in the first case, and the ability to drastically simplify government welfare--cutting out a ton of means-tested programs and their agencies, and replacing it all with a check each month. Gotta love it!

notahacker 11y ago
If the far left and the far right were forced to agree on the level of BI or accept the status quo I think we'd be back to the status quo though...
commandar 11y ago
>and the ability to drastically simplify government welfare--cutting out a ton of means-tested programs and their agencies, and replacing it all with a check each month. As someone that leans left, this is one of the big arguments I make in favor of UBI. Frankly, I'm tired of arguing over the minutia of welfare, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage, social security, etc. Fine. Scrap most of our social assistance programs outside of healthcare and replace them with a UBI. The progressive in me likes it because it gives everyone a minimum safety net and the capitalist in me likes it because it opens up entrepreneurism and the ability to pursue potentially innovative businesses -- especially in an economy increasingly geared toward service and information work -- to huge portions of the population that are otherwise locked out. Active, small businesses are good for everyone.
- Nevermark 11y ago
  I agree. Markets and businesses are changing so fast that most people are going to have periods of tough career change in their lives. Allowing people to make those important transitions without completely losing financial stability will help everyone.
- psaintla 11y ago
  The problem is, when you scrap all of those programs you immediately create more unemployment. There are a lot of jobs supporting social services, the hard part is going to be finding a way to phase in UBI without wrecking the economy.
  - savanaly 11y ago
    Removing jobs is viewed as an upside of a policy like that, not a downside (by economists only, pretty much, but they're right about it).
  - commandar 11y ago
    I suspect one of the side effects is that UBI would lead to a decrease in full time employment and an increase in part time employment. Basically, having a job would become a matter of making enough to live the lifestyle of your choice rather than a matter of having a roof over your head and the ability to eat. It's one of the reasons I mentioned scrapping the minimum wage when implementing UBI. The job market becomes much more of a market where work is paid for what it's worth because it's an actual market and employers don't have the undue leverage of simple survival over employees.
  - lukifer 11y ago
    Just for once, I want to hear a truly honest conservative politician: "We need to drastically shrink the government, which is why when I'm elected, one-eighth* of my constituency will be immediately unemployed!" (Not that there isn't a good case for eliminating federal waste; but the reality I never hear uttered in the conservative bubble is that the largest government expense is federal employees and subcontractors.)
    - nickff 11y ago
      By that measure, the "truly honest" progressive politician would say: "we need to drastically raise social program spending and taxes, which will dramatically increase unemployment!" (Not that there isn't a good case for improving federal social programs; but the reality I never hear uttered in the progressive bubble is that the largest government expenses are social programs like social security, medicare, and medicaid.)
- lukifer 11y ago
  Another overlooked right-leaning perk of UBI: depending on the details, it could allow reducing or even eliminating the minimum wage. This means that labor would be free to seek its true market value, resulting in more total jobs, and reduced incentive/necessity to ship jobs overseas.
  - commandar 11y ago
    Yup, exactly why I included the minimum wage in the list of things that could be scrapped in favor of UBI.
    - lukifer 11y ago
      Whoops, overlooked that in your post! But I think it bears repeating. :)
  - fpp 11y ago
    You don't need a minimum wage when you have an UBI worth its name (not just around / below the current minimum wage e.g. like discussed in Switzerland £1,500 a month or more). People will either do the job or you have to pay a reasonable amount for it - one key principle of the UBI - more people get a choice how they use / sell their time and are not prey like today in many regions / countries to the few who dictate how much they will receive for their time.
    - datashovel 11y ago
      Not sure any of us will see it, but I foresee a day when "employee" will be all but extinct. The reason? I think technology, taken to its logical extreme, will empower individuals to the point they'll be able to run fortune 500 scale businesses out of their garages (with all the automation-as-a-service that I imagine will exist). And board rooms? Who needs 'em when you've got the full power of sentient AI to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish.
    - chucksmash 11y ago
      I like the idea of a Universal Basic Income but running the numbers is eye opening: £1,500 ~= $2,274 $2,274/person/mo * 12 mo/yr * 300,000,000 people = $8,186,400,000,000/yr. $8 trillion a year to provide that level of UBI to all 300,000,000ish Americans. Not an inconsequential amount of money!
- aaron-lebo 11y ago
  The idealist in me loves it. The political realist in me just doesn't see it. Government programs have huge constituencies and embedded supporters within and without government who will fight tooth and nail to keep them. There is no way you will actually cut down on them as suggested.
  - Frondo 11y ago
    The best part is, the minimum income applies to them, too! While they're figuring out what to do next with their lives, they won't be left in the lurch, they'll get that sweet, sweet (well, minimal) UBI check just like everyone else.
  - ConfuciusSay 11y ago
    Not with that attitude you won't!
- bko 11y ago
  I highly doubt scrapping all social assistance is politically possible. Sure, basic income would be better than a patch work welfare state present in most of the developed world, but I am skeptical that it will be any different from other transfer programs already in place.
  - lumberjack 11y ago
    >Sure, basic income would be better than a patch work welfare state present in most of the developed world In many countries the government negotiates medicine prices as one entity for the entire country. This gives it a lot of leverage and the ability to provide medicine for all its citizens at a price far lower than what they would each individually be able to buy it at. Now if everybody had basic income the governments might start getting pressured to stop acting as an intermediate negotiator.
- evo_9 11y ago
  That is one of the best summaries of why this appeals to both the left and the right. Well said!
- ConfuciusSay 11y ago
  Also, less bureaucracy to languish and become inneficient, entrenched, and corrupt.
eddyl 11y ago
> When people on the far left and the far right agree, they're usually onto something. A similar observation is the "horseshoe theory": "The horseshoe theory in political science asserts that rather than the far left and the far right being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, they in fact closely resemble one another, much like the ends of a horseshoe."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
- robertfw 11y ago
  The problem comes with narrowing all political variation down to "left" vs "right". More dimensions are needed to tease apart the differences / similarities. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Other_multi-axis_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Other_multi...
  - kansface 11y ago
    A horseshoe could be multi dimensional.
hiou 11y ago
Which is a bit ironic because the infrastructure of basic income will require tracking of US citizens on a scale never before seen in the US. I'm not for or against basic income at this point, but it does make me chuckle a bit about idealists and their inability to see what their ideas will look like in practice.
- fwn 11y ago
  I am very much against the UBI but I don't see the tracking issue you mention. I'd love to know more about it!
- emiliobumachar 11y ago
  Please elaborate. I would think that all the government would need to know is whether each citizen exists, is still alive, and what's their bank account. With no in-depth knowledge of US government, I think it knows on average much more about each citizen.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    The government already, in theory, has a means of making payments to nearly every citizen (social security). So drop every welfare system but the Social Security Administration, and expand its payments to everyone, rather than just those currently qualifying (survivors and retirees, primarily). (Easier said than done)
    - hiou 11y ago
      ...and keep track of every single one of those US citizens' addresses and/or bank accounts. Every single one.
      - Jtsummers 11y ago
        http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/ http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/ The SSA is currently handling some 64 million beneficiaries. I'm not contending that it'd be easy, but it's a scaling problem at this point. Systems exist to handle it already.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
crdoconnor 11y ago
Not everybody on the left agrees: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/the-failure-of-a-past-basic-income-guarantee-the-speenhamland-system.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/the-failure-of-a-past... "The idea of a basic income guarantee is very popular with readers, more so that the notion of a job guarantee. Yet as we have mentioned in passing, this very sort of program was put in place on a large-scale basis in the past. Initially, it was very popular. However, in the long run it proved to be destructive to the recipients while tremendously beneficial to employers, who used the income support to further lower wages, thus increasing costs to the state and further reducing incentives to work. And when the system was dismantled, it was arguably the working poor, as opposed to the ones who had quit working altogether, who were hurt the most." I've yet to hear a good explanation for why basic income is superior to a job guarantee. We do not live a techno-futurist utopia where robots do all of our work. We do not want to be welfare queens; work gives us dignity. We do not even have world class infrastructure, we have infrastructure that is falling to pieces and direly needs work. The last time we were in this situation, FDR created jobs. Jobs that built stuff like schools, hospitals... the lincoln tunnel.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  A "basic income" is not the same as a "basic income guarantee".
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    But surely similar things would happen? Let's say your wage is 30K per year. On Jan 1 a UBI of 12K per year is to be instated. What would happen to your wage in a year? Personally, given that most all businesses want us to be loyal to them with no loyalty returned to us, my guess would be that you are let go and someone would be hired to do your job for 20K per year.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
icebraining 11y ago
Well, the US right wing, maybe, which seems much more State-adverse than right-wing parties here in Europe.
- xaqfox 11y ago
  What about the Chinese right-wing? Or the Russian? Or did the context of the article give enough clues that they weren't talking about those, but maybe so for Europe?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Do you have a point?
johnnyg 11y ago
I first heard of this idea through HN and have discussed it with several people who I consider far right. They are all concerned that this will ultimately end up as just another dole and the mother of all doles. They ask questions I don't have good answers to like: 1. This includes healthcare? 2. This includes disability? When I say...well, I don't know about healthcare, its curtains.
- commandar 11y ago
  Healthcare costs are a problem because they can often be unpredictable and catastrophic. A UBI wouldn't fix that; you still need either an insurance or a single-payer system of some sort. The short version is that you're going to end up with risk pooling of some description either way. Where the appeal comes for the right is that a UBI would let you eliminate our patchwork of other social assistance programs and all the headache, cost, and inefficiency of their associated bureaucracy. The basic pitch isn't actually all that different from the flat tax ideas that are popular in conservative circles with the distinction that a UBI would disproportionately affect the wealthy rather than the poor.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
clemensley 11y ago
I honestly cannot understand that people (left or right) are still discussing basic income. A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that you have to basically double the tax rate to pay for it. Here are the numbers for Germany, but I'd assume that the situation would be similar for many other countries. Assume we give each of the 80 Mio germans 10000 Euro per year. That's an expense of 800 Billion per year. Contrast this with a total tax income of ca 600 Billion per year [1]. It's not gonna fly... [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steueraufkommen_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steueraufkommen_(Deutschland)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ConfuciusSay 11y ago
  The argument that is made is that because you can entirely abolish a whole slew of agencies and other programs (welfare etc.) it's not as simple as just looking at current budgets, you need to factor in the savings you get from axing the agencies. To be clear I'm not saying that it's viable, I'm just saying that your calculation is not the one proponents of the idea are using.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
xlm1717 11y ago
Hmm, never heard of people on the right wanting a basic income to simplify government welfare.
- wdr1 11y ago
  In the 1980s it was advocated by those on the Right for that reason, albeit with a different name, a negative income tax. It was one of the reasons advocate by Milton Friedman.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> When people on the far left and the far right agree, they're usually onto something. In the 1930s the global far left and far right agreed on authoritarianism. While I personally think UBI is a great idea, I think that invoking a principal of that the points on which the far right and far left half similar views are likely to be correct to promote it is probably a substantially less great idea.
wdr1 11y ago
> Righties (well, go far right enough) Milton Friedman is now "far right"?

by Frondo 11y ago

notahacker 11y ago

If the far left and the far right were forced to agree on the level of BI or accept the status quo I think we'd be back to the status quo though...

commandar 11y ago

>and the ability to drastically simplify government welfare--cutting out a ton of means-tested programs and their agencies, and replacing it all with a check each month. As someone that leans left, this is one of the big arguments I make in favor of UBI. Frankly, I'm tired of arguing over the minutia of welfare, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage, social security, etc. Fine. Scrap most of our social assistance programs outside of healthcare and replace them with a UBI. The progressive in me likes it because it gives everyone a minimum safety net and the capitalist in me likes it because it opens up entrepreneurism and the ability to pursue potentially innovative businesses -- especially in an economy increasingly geared toward service and information work -- to huge portions of the population that are otherwise locked out. Active, small businesses are good for everyone.

Nevermark 11y ago
I agree. Markets and businesses are changing so fast that most people are going to have periods of tough career change in their lives. Allowing people to make those important transitions without completely losing financial stability will help everyone.
psaintla 11y ago
The problem is, when you scrap all of those programs you immediately create more unemployment. There are a lot of jobs supporting social services, the hard part is going to be finding a way to phase in UBI without wrecking the economy.
- savanaly 11y ago
  Removing jobs is viewed as an upside of a policy like that, not a downside (by economists only, pretty much, but they're right about it).
- commandar 11y ago
  I suspect one of the side effects is that UBI would lead to a decrease in full time employment and an increase in part time employment. Basically, having a job would become a matter of making enough to live the lifestyle of your choice rather than a matter of having a roof over your head and the ability to eat. It's one of the reasons I mentioned scrapping the minimum wage when implementing UBI. The job market becomes much more of a market where work is paid for what it's worth because it's an actual market and employers don't have the undue leverage of simple survival over employees.
- lukifer 11y ago
  Just for once, I want to hear a truly honest conservative politician: "We need to drastically shrink the government, which is why when I'm elected, one-eighth* of my constituency will be immediately unemployed!" (Not that there isn't a good case for eliminating federal waste; but the reality I never hear uttered in the conservative bubble is that the largest government expense is federal employees and subcontractors.)
  - nickff 11y ago
    By that measure, the "truly honest" progressive politician would say: "we need to drastically raise social program spending and taxes, which will dramatically increase unemployment!" (Not that there isn't a good case for improving federal social programs; but the reality I never hear uttered in the progressive bubble is that the largest government expenses are social programs like social security, medicare, and medicaid.)
lukifer 11y ago
Another overlooked right-leaning perk of UBI: depending on the details, it could allow reducing or even eliminating the minimum wage. This means that labor would be free to seek its true market value, resulting in more total jobs, and reduced incentive/necessity to ship jobs overseas.
- commandar 11y ago
  Yup, exactly why I included the minimum wage in the list of things that could be scrapped in favor of UBI.
  - lukifer 11y ago
    Whoops, overlooked that in your post! But I think it bears repeating. :)
- fpp 11y ago
  You don't need a minimum wage when you have an UBI worth its name (not just around / below the current minimum wage e.g. like discussed in Switzerland £1,500 a month or more). People will either do the job or you have to pay a reasonable amount for it - one key principle of the UBI - more people get a choice how they use / sell their time and are not prey like today in many regions / countries to the few who dictate how much they will receive for their time.
  - datashovel 11y ago
    Not sure any of us will see it, but I foresee a day when "employee" will be all but extinct. The reason? I think technology, taken to its logical extreme, will empower individuals to the point they'll be able to run fortune 500 scale businesses out of their garages (with all the automation-as-a-service that I imagine will exist). And board rooms? Who needs 'em when you've got the full power of sentient AI to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish.
  - chucksmash 11y ago
    I like the idea of a Universal Basic Income but running the numbers is eye opening: £1,500 ~= $2,274 $2,274/person/mo * 12 mo/yr * 300,000,000 people = $8,186,400,000,000/yr. $8 trillion a year to provide that level of UBI to all 300,000,000ish Americans. Not an inconsequential amount of money!
aaron-lebo 11y ago
The idealist in me loves it. The political realist in me just doesn't see it. Government programs have huge constituencies and embedded supporters within and without government who will fight tooth and nail to keep them. There is no way you will actually cut down on them as suggested.
- Frondo 11y ago
  The best part is, the minimum income applies to them, too! While they're figuring out what to do next with their lives, they won't be left in the lurch, they'll get that sweet, sweet (well, minimal) UBI check just like everyone else.
- ConfuciusSay 11y ago
  Not with that attitude you won't!
bko 11y ago
I highly doubt scrapping all social assistance is politically possible. Sure, basic income would be better than a patch work welfare state present in most of the developed world, but I am skeptical that it will be any different from other transfer programs already in place.
- lumberjack 11y ago
  >Sure, basic income would be better than a patch work welfare state present in most of the developed world In many countries the government negotiates medicine prices as one entity for the entire country. This gives it a lot of leverage and the ability to provide medicine for all its citizens at a price far lower than what they would each individually be able to buy it at. Now if everybody had basic income the governments might start getting pressured to stop acting as an intermediate negotiator.
evo_9 11y ago
That is one of the best summaries of why this appeals to both the left and the right. Well said!
ConfuciusSay 11y ago
Also, less bureaucracy to languish and become inneficient, entrenched, and corrupt.

eddyl 11y ago

> When people on the far left and the far right agree, they're usually onto something. A similar observation is the "horseshoe theory": "The horseshoe theory in political science asserts that rather than the far left and the far right being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, they in fact closely resemble one another, much like the ends of a horseshoe."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

robertfw 11y ago
The problem comes with narrowing all political variation down to "left" vs "right". More dimensions are needed to tease apart the differences / similarities. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Other_multi-axis_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Other_multi...
- kansface 11y ago
  A horseshoe could be multi dimensional.

hiou 11y ago

Which is a bit ironic because the infrastructure of basic income will require tracking of US citizens on a scale never before seen in the US. I'm not for or against basic income at this point, but it does make me chuckle a bit about idealists and their inability to see what their ideas will look like in practice.

fwn 11y ago
I am very much against the UBI but I don't see the tracking issue you mention. I'd love to know more about it!
emiliobumachar 11y ago
Please elaborate. I would think that all the government would need to know is whether each citizen exists, is still alive, and what's their bank account. With no in-depth knowledge of US government, I think it knows on average much more about each citizen.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  The government already, in theory, has a means of making payments to nearly every citizen (social security). So drop every welfare system but the Social Security Administration, and expand its payments to everyone, rather than just those currently qualifying (survivors and retirees, primarily). (Easier said than done)
  - hiou 11y ago
    ...and keep track of every single one of those US citizens' addresses and/or bank accounts. Every single one.
    - Jtsummers 11y ago
      http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/ http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/ The SSA is currently handling some 64 million beneficiaries. I'm not contending that it'd be easy, but it's a scaling problem at this point. Systems exist to handle it already.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

crdoconnor 11y ago

Not everybody on the left agrees: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/the-failure-of-a-past-basic-income-guarantee-the-speenhamland-system.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/the-failure-of-a-past... "The idea of a basic income guarantee is very popular with readers, more so that the notion of a job guarantee. Yet as we have mentioned in passing, this very sort of program was put in place on a large-scale basis in the past. Initially, it was very popular. However, in the long run it proved to be destructive to the recipients while tremendously beneficial to employers, who used the income support to further lower wages, thus increasing costs to the state and further reducing incentives to work. And when the system was dismantled, it was arguably the working poor, as opposed to the ones who had quit working altogether, who were hurt the most." I've yet to hear a good explanation for why basic income is superior to a job guarantee. We do not live a techno-futurist utopia where robots do all of our work. We do not want to be welfare queens; work gives us dignity. We do not even have world class infrastructure, we have infrastructure that is falling to pieces and direly needs work. The last time we were in this situation, FDR created jobs. Jobs that built stuff like schools, hospitals... the lincoln tunnel.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
A "basic income" is not the same as a "basic income guarantee".
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  But surely similar things would happen? Let's say your wage is 30K per year. On Jan 1 a UBI of 12K per year is to be instated. What would happen to your wage in a year? Personally, given that most all businesses want us to be loyal to them with no loyalty returned to us, my guess would be that you are let go and someone would be hired to do your job for 20K per year.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - marcosdumay 11y ago

icebraining 11y ago

Well, the US right wing, maybe, which seems much more State-adverse than right-wing parties here in Europe.

xaqfox 11y ago
What about the Chinese right-wing? Or the Russian? Or did the context of the article give enough clues that they weren't talking about those, but maybe so for Europe?
- icebraining 11y ago
  Do you have a point?

johnnyg 11y ago

I first heard of this idea through HN and have discussed it with several people who I consider far right. They are all concerned that this will ultimately end up as just another dole and the mother of all doles. They ask questions I don't have good answers to like: 1. This includes healthcare? 2. This includes disability? When I say...well, I don't know about healthcare, its curtains.

commandar 11y ago
Healthcare costs are a problem because they can often be unpredictable and catastrophic. A UBI wouldn't fix that; you still need either an insurance or a single-payer system of some sort. The short version is that you're going to end up with risk pooling of some description either way. Where the appeal comes for the right is that a UBI would let you eliminate our patchwork of other social assistance programs and all the headache, cost, and inefficiency of their associated bureaucracy. The basic pitch isn't actually all that different from the flat tax ideas that are popular in conservative circles with the distinction that a UBI would disproportionately affect the wealthy rather than the poor.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

clemensley 11y ago

I honestly cannot understand that people (left or right) are still discussing basic income. A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that you have to basically double the tax rate to pay for it. Here are the numbers for Germany, but I'd assume that the situation would be similar for many other countries. Assume we give each of the 80 Mio germans 10000 Euro per year. That's an expense of 800 Billion per year. Contrast this with a total tax income of ca 600 Billion per year [1]. It's not gonna fly... [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steueraufkommen_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steueraufkommen_(Deutschland)

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ConfuciusSay 11y ago
The argument that is made is that because you can entirely abolish a whole slew of agencies and other programs (welfare etc.) it's not as simple as just looking at current budgets, you need to factor in the savings you get from axing the agencies. To be clear I'm not saying that it's viable, I'm just saying that your calculation is not the one proponents of the idea are using.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

xlm1717 11y ago

Hmm, never heard of people on the right wanting a basic income to simplify government welfare.

wdr1 11y ago
In the 1980s it was advocated by those on the Right for that reason, albeit with a different name, a negative income tax. It was one of the reasons advocate by Milton Friedman.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> When people on the far left and the far right agree, they're usually onto something. In the 1930s the global far left and far right agreed on authoritarianism. While I personally think UBI is a great idea, I think that invoking a principal of that the points on which the far right and far left half similar views are likely to be correct to promote it is probably a substantially less great idea.

wdr1 11y ago

> Righties (well, go far right enough) Milton Friedman is now "far right"?