4 ms·

A $10,000 basic income, perhaps the bare minimum to prevent starvation and homelessness in the most rural parts of the country, for everyone in the United State

by pvnick 11y ago

A $10,000 basic income, perhaps the bare minimum to prevent starvation and homelessness in the most rural parts of the country, for everyone in the United States over the age of 18 involves roughly 2.5 trillion dollars in payouts per year, about 10% GDP for the country (about twice the GDP accounted for by social security). Increasing basic income to $20,000 per year doubles that to about 5 trillion, and that is still starvation wages in big cities. I am curious as to how automation pays that kind of cash. That's a big freaking number. Your suggestion about automation providing the wealth for basic income is the only argument that makes sense, because wealth redistribution from the nebulous "rich" just would not work on such a massive scale. Personally I don't think we're there yet, but maybe in a couple decades when we have strong AI and automation is more pronounced and self-improving.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
"A $10,000 basic income, perhaps the bare minimum to prevent starvation and homelessness in the most rural parts of the country, for everyone in the United States over the age of 18" You are assuming that every one of those people stops working and lives exclusively on the dole. That's almost certainly not going to be the case.
- eggnet 11y ago
  If you limit basic income, that's called welfare. I thought the point of basic income is that everyone gets it. Now sure... wealthy people will pay more in taxes than they receive in basic income. But it would still be a tax credit.
  - rory096 11y ago
    > I thought the point of basic income is that everyone gets it. Yes, but that doesn't mean it needs to be enough for a "living wage." It can still be a universal basic income while being low enough that recipients generally still need to work. (Of course you'd want to supplement it with welfare programs for those who can't work, which under more generous schemes might be eliminated entirely.)
skybrian 11y ago
There's no minimum needed to get started. $100 a month isn't going to pay the rent or even be noticed by a lot of people, but on the margin, it will make a difference to people living on the edge. Also remember that the average person breaks even, so affordability isn't really an issue.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > There's no minimum needed to get started. You probably want the initial value to be high enough that you can actually displace some existing means-tested aid programs, even though you may not initially be able to do all of them.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    For any amount, if it's counted as income before the means tested programs, you'll displace many means tested programs for some people. Of course, that also means that those people would likely be made worse off in the short term. Hopefully they could put whatever time they'd spent complying with those means tested programs to better use, and hopefully the other side of the discontinuities in pay-to-takehome would be a little more within reach. I've no idea what it all nets out to...
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Right, but given the justification for UBI, you don't want to displace some means-tested programs for some people, you want to completely replace at least one existing means-tested program. Slight adjustments in the number of beneficiaries doesn't really get you much benefit in terms of eliminating the inefficiencies of existing programs (in done ways out actually exaggerated them since there is a fixed component of the overhead costs for each program.) The real efficiencies Congress when you are able to eliminate programs altogether.
      - dllthomas 11y ago
        You miss some of the benefit, to be sure, but you also reduce the risks. $100 probably doesn't make much sense as the long term goal for a UBI, but it might well be a good place to transition through. One benefit of that kind of ramp up is that it naturally phases out existing programs, making them easier to kill when their time comes (and much clearer when their time has come). It also means (to the risk point above) that if we discover some ruinous dynamic caused by the UBI, we can more easily scrap it and fall back on existing systems.
drewrv 11y ago
US GDP has risen by more than 5 trillion since the year 2000 driven mostly by productivity improvements from tech. So we could already be doing it if we wanted to.
- eru 11y ago
  Is that in 2000 dollars?
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    Per the numbers Wolfram Alpha is giving, the increase seems to be close to $8 trillion nominally, which amounts to something over $5 trillion in 2000 dollars. Edited to add: I wondered how much of this was population growth, and certainly there has been some but real GDP per capita has grown about $5k over that period.
    - eru 11y ago
      Thanks for looking into this!
- ConceptJunkie 11y ago
  I was skeptical of your claim, but in fact, 5 trillion is an underestimate: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+gdp http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+gdp

by pvnick 11y ago

Turing_Machine 11y ago

"A $10,000 basic income, perhaps the bare minimum to prevent starvation and homelessness in the most rural parts of the country, for everyone in the United States over the age of 18" You are assuming that every one of those people stops working and lives exclusively on the dole. That's almost certainly not going to be the case.

eggnet 11y ago
If you limit basic income, that's called welfare. I thought the point of basic income is that everyone gets it. Now sure... wealthy people will pay more in taxes than they receive in basic income. But it would still be a tax credit.
- rory096 11y ago
  > I thought the point of basic income is that everyone gets it. Yes, but that doesn't mean it needs to be enough for a "living wage." It can still be a universal basic income while being low enough that recipients generally still need to work. (Of course you'd want to supplement it with welfare programs for those who can't work, which under more generous schemes might be eliminated entirely.)

skybrian 11y ago

There's no minimum needed to get started. $100 a month isn't going to pay the rent or even be noticed by a lot of people, but on the margin, it will make a difference to people living on the edge. Also remember that the average person breaks even, so affordability isn't really an issue.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> There's no minimum needed to get started. You probably want the initial value to be high enough that you can actually displace some existing means-tested aid programs, even though you may not initially be able to do all of them.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  For any amount, if it's counted as income before the means tested programs, you'll displace many means tested programs for some people. Of course, that also means that those people would likely be made worse off in the short term. Hopefully they could put whatever time they'd spent complying with those means tested programs to better use, and hopefully the other side of the discontinuities in pay-to-takehome would be a little more within reach. I've no idea what it all nets out to...
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Right, but given the justification for UBI, you don't want to displace some means-tested programs for some people, you want to completely replace at least one existing means-tested program. Slight adjustments in the number of beneficiaries doesn't really get you much benefit in terms of eliminating the inefficiencies of existing programs (in done ways out actually exaggerated them since there is a fixed component of the overhead costs for each program.) The real efficiencies Congress when you are able to eliminate programs altogether.
    - dllthomas 11y ago
      You miss some of the benefit, to be sure, but you also reduce the risks. $100 probably doesn't make much sense as the long term goal for a UBI, but it might well be a good place to transition through. One benefit of that kind of ramp up is that it naturally phases out existing programs, making them easier to kill when their time comes (and much clearer when their time has come). It also means (to the risk point above) that if we discover some ruinous dynamic caused by the UBI, we can more easily scrap it and fall back on existing systems.

drewrv 11y ago

US GDP has risen by more than 5 trillion since the year 2000 driven mostly by productivity improvements from tech. So we could already be doing it if we wanted to.

eru 11y ago
Is that in 2000 dollars?
- dllthomas 11y ago
  Per the numbers Wolfram Alpha is giving, the increase seems to be close to $8 trillion nominally, which amounts to something over $5 trillion in 2000 dollars. Edited to add: I wondered how much of this was population growth, and certainly there has been some but real GDP per capita has grown about $5k over that period.
  - eru 11y ago
    Thanks for looking into this!
ConceptJunkie 11y ago
I was skeptical of your claim, but in fact, 5 trillion is an underestimate: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+gdp http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+gdp