7 ms·

The 'unconditional' I take to mean that everyone, rich and poor, would get the same money. So even though the people with high income are paying more in taxes

The 'unconditional' I take to mean that everyone, rich and poor, would get the same money. So even though the people with high income are paying more in taxes to cover this, they're also getting the same amount paid to them in a separate check. So yes, they're paying more in taxes, but they're also getting the same benefit as everyone else, and this will take some of the sting off. UBI is an excellent libertarian/small-government solution.

lambdapie 11y ago
UBI might be a great policy, but your argument makes no sense from an accounting point of view. Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Basic income is no different in this regard. So to say that basic income is different because the right and poor both receive it is pure sophistry.
- bandrami 11y ago
  Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Only if it has no impact on monetary velocity. Redistributing money from people who are not going to spend it to people who will (or vice versa) is not zero sum. Lemma: redistribution is itself a monetary policy, given the velocity differences of different money holders.
  - lambdapie 11y ago
    You use the term "monetary velocity" as if it was some term of trade, but I have a PhD in economics and I've never seen it used this way. Are you referring to a specific school of thought or author when you use this term? Redistributing money from people who are not going to spend it to people who will (or vice versa) is not zero sum. This is the essence of (neo-)Keynsianism but it only applies during recessions. In the long run, redistributing money to people who are going to spend it has zero effect. Of course redistribution has a positive effect on welfare as defined by the sum of total utility, but it doesn't increase, for example, GDP.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > You use the term "monetary velocity" as if it was some term of trade, but I have a PhD in economics and I've never seen it used this way. "Monetary velocity" is not the usual phrasing I've seen, but from the context it was presented in and the description fo the effects attributed to it (and, well, the name -- even though its not exactly the usual term) its fairly obviously the same thing as "velocity of money" [0], a fairly basic economic concept covered in most introductory economics courses. > Of course redistribution has a positive effect on welfare as defined by the sum of total utility, but it doesn't increase, for example, GDP. That's debatable. Redistribution to a group more likely to expend money within the domestic economy can increase the velocity of money in the domestic economy even if it has no effect on overall velocity (which it can also have), increasing GDP, in either case. In any case, measuring economy health by aggregate measures like GDP is not done because those are real fundamental goals, its done because measuring the sum of utility isn't practical. Improving the some of utility without increasing one of the headline proxies isn't "zero effect" in the first place. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
- chrispeel 11y ago
  > Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Basic income is no different in this regard. So to say that basic income is different because the right and poor both receive it is pure sophistry. I agree with the zero-sum idea; I should have been more clear that the point was only that making basic income universal might help psychologically. Here's my comments to a different post along the same lines above: People are foolish. That's the whole basis of behavioral economics. The point is not that a rational homo economicus would be any more comforted by the fact that the basic income is universal, but that normal people would be. I don't think this universal nature is essential to the basic idea, and would be happy to have a negative income tax.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
vlunkr 11y ago
It's still a net loss for them. Yes they're getting some too, but it's just their money coming back to them. You'd be foolish to feel comforted by that. Also, UBI is far from libertarianism. Libertarians want to be in control of their own money.
- ploxiln 11y ago
  I'm kinda libertarian, and I kinda like the idea of a UBI, because it means we no longer need people in power to make decisions about who gets welfare and other social support, and all the gaming and corruption involved. I've come around to the idea that there can't and won't be zero public social support, so UBI seems like the fairest, least-overhead way to take care of it. The downside is, the argument/power of who to let in the country, or who in the country gets UBI, gets a lot more serious. There really aren't any easy answers here...
  - dantheman 11y ago
    UBI can't replace welfare -- it cannot provide enough money to everyone to replace whole salaries. If you agree that welfare should exist to take care of people who cannot work or have expensive conditions that need to be treated then BI cannot replace it.
    - ploxiln 11y ago
      If you have to keep welfare, medicare, social security, etc... then what's the point? Just another bureaucratic money sink?
    - eru 11y ago
      > If you agree that welfare should exist to take care of people who cannot work or have expensive conditions that need to be treated then BI cannot replace it. That's what insurance is for. (And the state (or parents) can take out insurance for the kids before they are born---ie before anyone knows whether they are at special risk of any diseases or conditions, thus charging the average is economically fine.)
- 11y ago
um_ya 11y ago
You must not be a libertarian, so stop projecting it as a libertarian ideal, because it isn't.... If I'm rich, and I have to pay 20% more for UBI, but I get 1% back from UBI, essentially I'm paying 19% for other people. To paint this as "they're getting the benefit too", is completely ignorant.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  You must not be a libertarian, so stop projecting it as a libertarian ideal, because it isn't. One of the best-known advocates of UBI/negative income tax was Milton Friedman, and he most definitely was a libertarian. There's a difference between idealistic versions of political philosophies that don't match human behavior, and practical versions of those philosophies that do. Let's say we wind up with 50 million people who have no marketable skill. What's your solution? Let them starve? What are you going to do when they take exception to that? If your answer is to simply kill them, good enough, but you need to face up to the fact that this is what you're advocating. Jailing them is not an option -- that will likely cost more than the UBI scheme, and you can't even put them to work (it being a given that they can't perform any job that provides a net economic gain).
  - Rumford 11y ago
    Oh not this again. First of all, Friedman advocated a negative income tax as a replacement to the ad-hoc mess of redistributive taxes, grants and welfare programs that exist now. Add a UBI to food stamps, unemployment benefits, farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the problems only get worse. Second, this doomsday scenario of 50 million people waking up one day to discover there isn't a single thing in the world they can do to feed themselves is such hyperbolic nonsense you might as well be asking how opponents of a UBI plan to deal with a meteor demolishing Texas. Economies change. Sometimes a profession becomes obsolete. The people involved in it go elsewhere and on the whole everyone gets richer. It may sound unpleasant but it's only the same thing mankind has done a thousand times over already with great success. Unless you're mad about the fact that you don't have to milk your own cows anymore. This supposed choice between killing, jailing, or subsidizing millions of people is a false dichotomy that would sound like a joke to me if so many weren't sincerely buying into it. The other and far more reasonable option is to let free human beings navigate a changing world by adapting in the way each of them sees fit. They do it all the time. They don't need some savior swooping in with armloads of other people's money.

lambdapie 11y ago

UBI might be a great policy, but your argument makes no sense from an accounting point of view. Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Basic income is no different in this regard. So to say that basic income is different because the right and poor both receive it is pure sophistry.

bandrami 11y ago
Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Only if it has no impact on monetary velocity. Redistributing money from people who are not going to spend it to people who will (or vice versa) is not zero sum. Lemma: redistribution is itself a monetary policy, given the velocity differences of different money holders.
- lambdapie 11y ago
  You use the term "monetary velocity" as if it was some term of trade, but I have a PhD in economics and I've never seen it used this way. Are you referring to a specific school of thought or author when you use this term? Redistributing money from people who are not going to spend it to people who will (or vice versa) is not zero sum. This is the essence of (neo-)Keynsianism but it only applies during recessions. In the long run, redistributing money to people who are going to spend it has zero effect. Of course redistribution has a positive effect on welfare as defined by the sum of total utility, but it doesn't increase, for example, GDP.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > You use the term "monetary velocity" as if it was some term of trade, but I have a PhD in economics and I've never seen it used this way. "Monetary velocity" is not the usual phrasing I've seen, but from the context it was presented in and the description fo the effects attributed to it (and, well, the name -- even though its not exactly the usual term) its fairly obviously the same thing as "velocity of money" [0], a fairly basic economic concept covered in most introductory economics courses. > Of course redistribution has a positive effect on welfare as defined by the sum of total utility, but it doesn't increase, for example, GDP. That's debatable. Redistribution to a group more likely to expend money within the domestic economy can increase the velocity of money in the domestic economy even if it has no effect on overall velocity (which it can also have), increasing GDP, in either case. In any case, measuring economy health by aggregate measures like GDP is not done because those are real fundamental goals, its done because measuring the sum of utility isn't practical. Improving the some of utility without increasing one of the headline proxies isn't "zero effect" in the first place. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
chrispeel 11y ago
> Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Basic income is no different in this regard. So to say that basic income is different because the right and poor both receive it is pure sophistry. I agree with the zero-sum idea; I should have been more clear that the point was only that making basic income universal might help psychologically. Here's my comments to a different post along the same lines above: People are foolish. That's the whole basis of behavioral economics. The point is not that a rational homo economicus would be any more comforted by the fact that the basic income is universal, but that normal people would be. I don't think this universal nature is essential to the basic idea, and would be happy to have a negative income tax.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

vlunkr 11y ago

It's still a net loss for them. Yes they're getting some too, but it's just their money coming back to them. You'd be foolish to feel comforted by that. Also, UBI is far from libertarianism. Libertarians want to be in control of their own money.

ploxiln 11y ago
I'm kinda libertarian, and I kinda like the idea of a UBI, because it means we no longer need people in power to make decisions about who gets welfare and other social support, and all the gaming and corruption involved. I've come around to the idea that there can't and won't be zero public social support, so UBI seems like the fairest, least-overhead way to take care of it. The downside is, the argument/power of who to let in the country, or who in the country gets UBI, gets a lot more serious. There really aren't any easy answers here...
- dantheman 11y ago
  UBI can't replace welfare -- it cannot provide enough money to everyone to replace whole salaries. If you agree that welfare should exist to take care of people who cannot work or have expensive conditions that need to be treated then BI cannot replace it.
  - ploxiln 11y ago
    If you have to keep welfare, medicare, social security, etc... then what's the point? Just another bureaucratic money sink?
  - eru 11y ago
    > If you agree that welfare should exist to take care of people who cannot work or have expensive conditions that need to be treated then BI cannot replace it. That's what insurance is for. (And the state (or parents) can take out insurance for the kids before they are born---ie before anyone knows whether they are at special risk of any diseases or conditions, thus charging the average is economically fine.)
11y ago

um_ya 11y ago

You must not be a libertarian, so stop projecting it as a libertarian ideal, because it isn't.... If I'm rich, and I have to pay 20% more for UBI, but I get 1% back from UBI, essentially I'm paying 19% for other people. To paint this as "they're getting the benefit too", is completely ignorant.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
You must not be a libertarian, so stop projecting it as a libertarian ideal, because it isn't. One of the best-known advocates of UBI/negative income tax was Milton Friedman, and he most definitely was a libertarian. There's a difference between idealistic versions of political philosophies that don't match human behavior, and practical versions of those philosophies that do. Let's say we wind up with 50 million people who have no marketable skill. What's your solution? Let them starve? What are you going to do when they take exception to that? If your answer is to simply kill them, good enough, but you need to face up to the fact that this is what you're advocating. Jailing them is not an option -- that will likely cost more than the UBI scheme, and you can't even put them to work (it being a given that they can't perform any job that provides a net economic gain).
- Rumford 11y ago
  Oh not this again. First of all, Friedman advocated a negative income tax as a replacement to the ad-hoc mess of redistributive taxes, grants and welfare programs that exist now. Add a UBI to food stamps, unemployment benefits, farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the problems only get worse. Second, this doomsday scenario of 50 million people waking up one day to discover there isn't a single thing in the world they can do to feed themselves is such hyperbolic nonsense you might as well be asking how opponents of a UBI plan to deal with a meteor demolishing Texas. Economies change. Sometimes a profession becomes obsolete. The people involved in it go elsewhere and on the whole everyone gets richer. It may sound unpleasant but it's only the same thing mankind has done a thousand times over already with great success. Unless you're mad about the fact that you don't have to milk your own cows anymore. This supposed choice between killing, jailing, or subsidizing millions of people is a false dichotomy that would sound like a joke to me if so many weren't sincerely buying into it. The other and far more reasonable option is to let free human beings navigate a changing world by adapting in the way each of them sees fit. They do it all the time. They don't need some savior swooping in with armloads of other people's money.