4 ms·

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%

by 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.
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    What do you imagine alternative solutions to the problems of economic (im)mobility? Free money to all citizens seems like a bold economic policy with no attainable goal and presumably would draw backlash from wealthy business owners who would simply raise prices on basic goods. Instead why not just invest in public infrastructure like transportation and public housing, and education?
    - eru 11y ago
      > [...] presumably would draw backlash from wealthy business owners who would simply raise prices on basic goods. Why don't greedy people raise prices already today?
    - Rumford 11y ago
      The simplest thing I could suggest is to repeal all government-enforced occupational licensing. For heaven's sake you need a state license just to give manicures. In America. This includes everything from manicurists to medical doctors. Repealing these would do two things. First, it would eliminate an unnecessary barrier of entry into a wide variety of occupations, unleashing a great many new job opportunities. Second, it would give consumers -- particularly the poor -- access to low-cost alternatives that today are illegal. Government approval is no guarantee of quality anyway. We don't need it. I would also suggest eliminating the Federal Reserve System and its monetary policy of gradual inflation. America's period of greatest economic growth was between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War I. Under a regime of moderate deflation the economy grew 4% year-over-year for a sustained period. Living standards rose across the board. Economic mobility was high. I believe this to be directly attributable to the incentives that exist under a monetary policy of slow deflation: saving is rewarded, prices fall over time, yet innovation and wise investment are greatly rewarded. (Gradual inflation, on the other hand, impels people to borrow and borrow a lot, which just on its own reduces one's economic mobility. Excessive borrowing can also be understood as consuming too much in the present at the cost of the future, which is where the boom-bust cycle comes from. Gradual inflation also makes saving extremely difficult. Anyone who doesn't want their savings to erode over time is forced to become a speculator. It subsidizes Wall Street at the expense of every holder of Dollars.)
- nightski 11y ago
  Why do we have 50 million people with no marketable skills? Clearly the other 80% of the population was able to gain a skill that is marketable. I'd probably start there.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    The thing is that there are a lot of people who, in the past, might have been able to make a living doing simple farm work, or tightening bolts on a car assembly line, or what have you. Those jobs have largely been automated away. Increasingly the only jobs available to that segment of the population are things like fast food. You can afford to pay a decent wage to someone who's turning out $50,000 cars. You can't afford to pay a decent wage to someone who's turning out $2.00 burgers. Education/training can't solve the fundamental problem, which is that a large number of these folks just aren't capable of becoming programmers, or surgeons, or lawyers, or anything else that of that nature. What should we do with them? The problem isn't going to go away.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Its not clear that education/training can't solve it. There is resistance, as people have been burned by pointless 'education' that takes years. So they drop out/don't go to a college. But we could try to fix that. Its a route that hasn't been tried, in any case.
      - Turing_Machine 11y ago
        No, I'm sorry, it's quite clear that someone whose cognitive abilities are just adequate to tighten the same bolt over and over again is never going to become a neurosurgeon, no matter how much education you provide.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        That's a form of bigotry against the working class that's all too common. Sorry, everyone who didn't go to your University isn't an idiot. And we don't need endless Neurosurgeons; we need folks who can operate our sophisticated society efficiently and pleasantly. There are a million ways to live better, than being sentenced to a life of burger flipping.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

by um_ya 11y ago

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.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  What do you imagine alternative solutions to the problems of economic (im)mobility? Free money to all citizens seems like a bold economic policy with no attainable goal and presumably would draw backlash from wealthy business owners who would simply raise prices on basic goods. Instead why not just invest in public infrastructure like transportation and public housing, and education?
  - eru 11y ago
    > [...] presumably would draw backlash from wealthy business owners who would simply raise prices on basic goods. Why don't greedy people raise prices already today?
  - Rumford 11y ago
    The simplest thing I could suggest is to repeal all government-enforced occupational licensing. For heaven's sake you need a state license just to give manicures. In America. This includes everything from manicurists to medical doctors. Repealing these would do two things. First, it would eliminate an unnecessary barrier of entry into a wide variety of occupations, unleashing a great many new job opportunities. Second, it would give consumers -- particularly the poor -- access to low-cost alternatives that today are illegal. Government approval is no guarantee of quality anyway. We don't need it. I would also suggest eliminating the Federal Reserve System and its monetary policy of gradual inflation. America's period of greatest economic growth was between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War I. Under a regime of moderate deflation the economy grew 4% year-over-year for a sustained period. Living standards rose across the board. Economic mobility was high. I believe this to be directly attributable to the incentives that exist under a monetary policy of slow deflation: saving is rewarded, prices fall over time, yet innovation and wise investment are greatly rewarded. (Gradual inflation, on the other hand, impels people to borrow and borrow a lot, which just on its own reduces one's economic mobility. Excessive borrowing can also be understood as consuming too much in the present at the cost of the future, which is where the boom-bust cycle comes from. Gradual inflation also makes saving extremely difficult. Anyone who doesn't want their savings to erode over time is forced to become a speculator. It subsidizes Wall Street at the expense of every holder of Dollars.)
nightski 11y ago
Why do we have 50 million people with no marketable skills? Clearly the other 80% of the population was able to gain a skill that is marketable. I'd probably start there.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  The thing is that there are a lot of people who, in the past, might have been able to make a living doing simple farm work, or tightening bolts on a car assembly line, or what have you. Those jobs have largely been automated away. Increasingly the only jobs available to that segment of the population are things like fast food. You can afford to pay a decent wage to someone who's turning out $50,000 cars. You can't afford to pay a decent wage to someone who's turning out $2.00 burgers. Education/training can't solve the fundamental problem, which is that a large number of these folks just aren't capable of becoming programmers, or surgeons, or lawyers, or anything else that of that nature. What should we do with them? The problem isn't going to go away.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Its not clear that education/training can't solve it. There is resistance, as people have been burned by pointless 'education' that takes years. So they drop out/don't go to a college. But we could try to fix that. Its a route that hasn't been tried, in any case.
    - Turing_Machine 11y ago
      No, I'm sorry, it's quite clear that someone whose cognitive abilities are just adequate to tighten the same bolt over and over again is never going to become a neurosurgeon, no matter how much education you provide.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        That's a form of bigotry against the working class that's all too common. Sorry, everyone who didn't go to your University isn't an idiot. And we don't need endless Neurosurgeons; we need folks who can operate our sophisticated society efficiently and pleasantly. There are a million ways to live better, than being sentenced to a life of burger flipping.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]