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The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do basic math. Take for instance the amount spent on the bank bailouts, which were suppo

The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do basic math. Take for instance the amount spent on the bank bailouts, which were supposedly done to help stimulate the economy. If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving everybody a check for somewhere around 20K (the number is debatable). Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the last few decades. That's another 20K or so per man, woman, and child. The national debt is closing in on 20T. Would you rather have a balanced budget and a check for 100K? (I understand the math is way fuzzy here. It's to make a point.) We're reaching the point where the average person who supports helping the poor can figure out that we could have just set up an endowment for each poor person when they were born and spent less money than this. And at the same time we would get rid of a lot of folks doing useless overhead simply because the system is so complex. For those reasons and more I like the UBI idea. But ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. We need about a thousand different experiments -- ran for 10 or 20 years -- before we can begin to start saying what might work or not work. When I look at other charitable causes (aid to Africa comes to mind first), the rhetoric got way out ahead of the actual results for many, many decades. Tons of time, effort, and money were spent on strategies that didn't work but sounded pretty cool. We'd be idiots not to recognize that this is the danger here too. The first question we have to ask is this: What is UBI? Is it a reliable income in place of a bunch of other services? Or is it in addition to a bunch of other services? The difference matters. Once that's defined, I sure would like to see if a majority of people doing nothing "rubs off" on ambitious, driven people. Or maybe it works the other way around. Maybe a small percentage of ambitious, driven people, in a society without external pressures, can persuade more and more folks to find meaning in helping others. Beats me. Sure will be fun to learn more. Slogans are great. Results are better.

cromulent 11y ago
As it is such a massive societal change, some sort of testing and experimentation would have to be done, I think. The recent Freakonomics episode on the topic talked about a Canadian experiment "Mincome" from the 70s. There were some interesting results. Worth a listen. "FORGET: One of the findings was that high-school completion rates had increased, and we discovered that boys, in particular, in low-income families had been under a fair amount of pressure to become self-supporting as quickly as they could. When mincome came along, some of the families decided that they could allow their sons to stay in high school just a little bit longer. So instead of quitting school at age 16 and getting their first full-time job, these boys stayed in school until they were 18, until they graduated from high school and took their first full-time job a little bit later." http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/
ChrisLomont 11y ago
>If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving everybody The bailouts were asset swaps, repaid with a gain for the taxpayer [1]. They were not cash giveaways. Comparing this to simply giving cash to people is ludicrous. The most at risk was about 2T, with only 650B actually out at any time, which at your claim of 20K per person, only pays for 32 million people. You're off by an order of magnitude (completely ignoring that the bailouts were asset swaps, not giveaways). >Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the last few decades. That's another 20K or so per man, woman, and child Over the course of decades. It's not 20K in a year. It's more like 1/40th ($500) of that a year. And the only places I can find a number this large includes Medicare/SS payouts. Are you going to remove these programs (especially Mecicare/Medicaid) with your conversion to a once in a lifetime check per person? > The national debt is closing in on 20T. Would you rather have a balanced budget and a check for 100K? That's nonsense. Adding massively more to spending via UBI is not going to balance the budget or reduce the debt, and I don't know what magic lets you take 20T of debt (the biggest holder being SS, and large amounts to the Fed and loans to US investors, such as retirement funds) and simply divide by 320M people to get 100K (actually, this is 62.5K) in a check. Nothing in this line of numerology makes any sense. These uses are nowhere near exchangeable. >(I understand the math is way fuzzy here. It's to make a point.) The math isn't fuzzy. It's simply wrong, from the starting values, to the calculations, to the conclusions. >The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do basic math. Unfortunately this basic math is not coupled to reality, ignores very important and well tested economic ideas backed by 100+ years of empirical data, and is ignores the downsides and costs involved. And so far, I fail to see many UBI proponents that are able to do basic math. A few can, but mostly they are full of numerology and ignoring the meaning of various amounts. I've yet to see a UBI that doesn't either require massive tax hikes to the point of possibly destroying the economy or leave those needing assistance now in much worse shape. >Slogans are great. Results are better. Intellectually honest claims checking is better, and it helps avoid chasing impossible or unlikely or destructive plans. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/ https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  You seem to be in search of an argument. I will not provide you with one. Yes, the math is plain wrong. No, it does not change the point. I am not writing an essay or presenting a white paper on UBI. Heck, I'm not even supporting UBI except in terms of "let's experiment" So that was a wonderful tear down of my math, which I expected, but it doesn't change my thesis any: whatever amount of money you would like to provide for good causes, a good case can be made to eliminate the middleman and provide that money directly to everybody -- no qualifying, no overhead, no gaming the system, no complex system of administration. I'm not in favor of massive tax hikes. I'm also not in favor of bandying around the slogan "UBI". As I said, until there's some real policy there, it looks attractive on the surface. I outlined the reasons why it looks attractive. That's about all we can say about it right now.

cromulent 11y ago

As it is such a massive societal change, some sort of testing and experimentation would have to be done, I think. The recent Freakonomics episode on the topic talked about a Canadian experiment "Mincome" from the 70s. There were some interesting results. Worth a listen. "FORGET: One of the findings was that high-school completion rates had increased, and we discovered that boys, in particular, in low-income families had been under a fair amount of pressure to become self-supporting as quickly as they could. When mincome came along, some of the families decided that they could allow their sons to stay in high school just a little bit longer. So instead of quitting school at age 16 and getting their first full-time job, these boys stayed in school until they were 18, until they graduated from high school and took their first full-time job a little bit later." http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/

ChrisLomont 11y ago

>If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving everybody The bailouts were asset swaps, repaid with a gain for the taxpayer [1]. They were not cash giveaways. Comparing this to simply giving cash to people is ludicrous. The most at risk was about 2T, with only 650B actually out at any time, which at your claim of 20K per person, only pays for 32 million people. You're off by an order of magnitude (completely ignoring that the bailouts were asset swaps, not giveaways). >Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the last few decades. That's another 20K or so per man, woman, and child Over the course of decades. It's not 20K in a year. It's more like 1/40th ($500) of that a year. And the only places I can find a number this large includes Medicare/SS payouts. Are you going to remove these programs (especially Mecicare/Medicaid) with your conversion to a once in a lifetime check per person? > The national debt is closing in on 20T. Would you rather have a balanced budget and a check for 100K? That's nonsense. Adding massively more to spending via UBI is not going to balance the budget or reduce the debt, and I don't know what magic lets you take 20T of debt (the biggest holder being SS, and large amounts to the Fed and loans to US investors, such as retirement funds) and simply divide by 320M people to get 100K (actually, this is 62.5K) in a check. Nothing in this line of numerology makes any sense. These uses are nowhere near exchangeable. >(I understand the math is way fuzzy here. It's to make a point.) The math isn't fuzzy. It's simply wrong, from the starting values, to the calculations, to the conclusions. >The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do basic math. Unfortunately this basic math is not coupled to reality, ignores very important and well tested economic ideas backed by 100+ years of empirical data, and is ignores the downsides and costs involved. And so far, I fail to see many UBI proponents that are able to do basic math. A few can, but mostly they are full of numerology and ignoring the meaning of various amounts. I've yet to see a UBI that doesn't either require massive tax hikes to the point of possibly destroying the economy or leave those needing assistance now in much worse shape. >Slogans are great. Results are better. Intellectually honest claims checking is better, and it helps avoid chasing impossible or unlikely or destructive plans. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/ https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
You seem to be in search of an argument. I will not provide you with one. Yes, the math is plain wrong. No, it does not change the point. I am not writing an essay or presenting a white paper on UBI. Heck, I'm not even supporting UBI except in terms of "let's experiment" So that was a wonderful tear down of my math, which I expected, but it doesn't change my thesis any: whatever amount of money you would like to provide for good causes, a good case can be made to eliminate the middleman and provide that money directly to everybody -- no qualifying, no overhead, no gaming the system, no complex system of administration. I'm not in favor of massive tax hikes. I'm also not in favor of bandying around the slogan "UBI". As I said, until there's some real policy there, it looks attractive on the surface. I outlined the reasons why it looks attractive. That's about all we can say about it right now.