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UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

cmrx64 11y ago
> Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. Is that such a bad thing? I'm not even sure if the effect would be significantly different than today's situation, in which you can fall into any addiction you want if you have resources.
- golemotron 11y ago
  I don't think it would be too much different either. The problem would be if there were negative externalities. That's likely if people try to shoot for meaning rather than addiction and find it in ways that hurt others. We've seen that throughout history with the young: gangs, terrorism, and revolution.
gshulegaard 11y ago
For me, I don't see this as being a problem. First, I am a believer in economic momentum and money multiplier dynamics (perhaps irrationally so). But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. Our current welfare system places too much restriction and I feel leaves too many welfare recipients with non-optimal purchasing decision...not to mention there is an overhead to our (America's) current welfare system as far as administration and what-else. Another thing is that there have been studies done which show that giving cash to the poor has better outcomes than expected: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-money-directly-poor-people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-... There are also deeper things we can theorize about regarding poor behavior, but at the end of the day I can't help but feel like a UBI would be a more efficient welfare distribution (more money spent actually issued as monetary welfare benefits) which would have a stronger economic impact than our current welfare system. Disclaimer: The above is just my opinion, not claiming it to be right or wrong.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. So what's your counter to the 'broken windows' objection? It's pertinent in this case because we're talking not about broken windows but broken (addicted, depressed, isolated) people.
  - gshulegaard 11y ago
    That's a rather complicated question, but in general I think a lot of people tend to believe in a greater broken windows effect than actually manifests in practice...from the Economist article: > Mr Anoche’s first move on getting his windfall was to buy a new roof. Not only is thatch leaky, but it also needs to be replaced twice a year, at $40 a time. He spent half the money on his home, and half on timber and chickens. Those two businesses now turn a monthly profit of nearly $90. “If you’ve got the money and the mindset,” he says, “you can change your life.” > Of course, not all the money has gone on things that make development economists happy. Sitting on a rough bench in his moonshine bar in a banana grove, a tipsy Bernard Okumo says his wife used her windfall to bail him out of jail, where he was facing a murder charge. But the first independent study of Give Directly’s methods, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro (who is a former board member of Give Directly), suggests this sort of spending is unusual. In randomly selected poor households in 63 villages that have received the windfalls, they say, the number of children going without food for a day has fallen by over a third and livestock holdings have risen by half. A year after the scheme began, incomes have gone up by a quarter and recipients seem less stressed, according to tests of their cortisol levels. My own opinion still tends to believe that the net benefit will be positive, despite misapplications. At the moment the things I have read seem to indicate that while misuse occurs, it generally is the exception to the rule, not the other way around. Edit: I should also point out that UCT (Unconditional Cash Transfers) are concluded to only be part of the solution to poverty in the article. CCT (Conditional Cash Transfers) are also useful for correcting deeper systemic issues (such as undervaluing education in the poor).
    - 11y ago
throwaway2048 11y ago
The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system. Well, not the entire point (there's lots of different reasons that people advocate UBI), but its certainly one of the points.
- brbsix 11y ago
  By unworthy I assume you mean unworthy of our support and sympathy? What differentiates the "19th century style" worthy and unworthy poor is that unworthy poor are thought to have made poor decisions and brought about their circumstances on themselves whereas the worthy poor were seen as suffering through little to no fault of their own. Prior to the welfare state (which makes no such distinction) the "unworthy poor" served as an example of what not to do. Do we really want to discard that wisdom (even more than we already have)? Put another way, is every poor person equally deserving of our support and sympathy? I would think not.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - c22 11y ago
    I think throwaway2048 meant something more along the lines of "worthy to participate in our society" and, unfortunately, whether you deem them worthy or not they are participants of society so reducing the friction of their interaction with society benefits all. (Friction rubs both ways.) The argument is that dropping this "distinction" could help lead to more pragmatically sound policies.
    - golemotron 11y ago
ebbv 11y ago
Yes and some people will spend their UBI on weapons and murder people. Does that mean we try to figure out who's going to be murders so we don't give them any money? Some people have problems. That doesn't mean you scrap a good thing just because you don't like dealing with problems.
- golemotron 11y ago
  No one said that. Reread my comment. What I said is that the cultural component needs to be addressed too.
ones_and_zeros 11y ago
For this to be a concern you'd have to believe that there are currently a significant amount of people that would "fall into various addictions" if only they could afford to...
- golemotron 11y ago
  When there's a deficit of meaning in people's lives, that's true.
  - ones_and_zeros 11y ago
    The idea that addicts don't have meaning in their life is completely false. But, even if that were true, you'd have to think you are a pretty special snowflake to think that there are currently people that: a) have "a deficit of meaning" in their life (not sure where you come up with this stuff but keep it coming, I think it's great!) b) Once the stress of wage slavery is removed, they wouldn't spend time searching for meaning... just like everyone else does. I mean, where do you think friendship, purpose, spirituality, etc come from?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
dragonwriter 11y ago
> UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. I don't think you understand the problems it seeks to solve. Among the major problems it seeks to address (different advocates may not consider all of these important, and some may consider additional problems): (1) Means- and behavior-tested (and use-limited) welfare programs substitute external judgements of what will provide utility for the recipient for the recipients own judgement, and expend extensive resources applying the means- and behavior-tests, all of which causes significant inefficiencies. (2) Using minimum wage to reduce economic duress in the labor market, while it has some demonstrated value such that many UBI see it as a net positive compared to no policy to address economic duress, also has drawbacks in that it eliminates the possibility of work that provides a mutual benefit being done, without economic duress, where the pay would be low. UBI provides an alternative approach to address mitigate economic duress and thus allow more work that provides net economic benefit to be done. (3) Wealth and income inequality is accelerating, and in a way where the saying "a rising tide lifts all boats" is not an accurate reflection of the results, with virtually all of the gains in recent economic expansion going to the very top of the distribution, and this produces a variety of social harms, and is expected to be reinforced as automation and other economic changes continue to reduce the relative value of labor other than the most skilled (resulting in returns increasingly going to capital and shrinking pool of elite labor). Some mechanism to constrain this growing inequality is seen as desirable to address the social impacts.
TrevorJ 11y ago
TO me, they key problem you have to solve is: how do you avoid rent-seeking, and cost of living inflation? I'm not convinced UBI works in a free market.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > TO me, they key problem you have to solve is: how do you avoid rent-seeking, and cost of living inflation? You avoid rent-seeking by avoiding monopolies; competitive markets prevent rent-seeking. > and cost of living inflation? Monetary policy, the same way inflation is managed now. That aside, before considering any corrective changes in monetary policy, any UBI is likely to produce some level of upward pressure on prices, but at a level where buying power is still increased for people on the lower end of the distribution receiving UBI.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    Where has this broken down with higher education then? Costs are rising in lock step with the availability of loans. Monopolies are not the reason that prices rise according to what the market will bear.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      For a number of reasons, higher ed supply is slow to react to increased demand (for any given student cohort; scaling out to serve different kinds of students with different demands is a slightly different story), which means you've got a low price elasticity of demand in ay least the short run. And, in fact, part of this is that largely higher education is monopolistic. Except at the very bottom tier, degrees from established institutions are not, in the market, as having equivalent substitutes when a new entrant comes into the market. The established reputation of institutions is a big part of what people are paying for.
      - TrevorJ 10y ago
        Those factors have nearly always been the case though, and do not explain the massive price inflations that have occurred in lock step with loan availability. The increases have also not been confined to top tier universities so the monopoly argument doesn't explain them.

cmrx64 11y ago

> Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. Is that such a bad thing? I'm not even sure if the effect would be significantly different than today's situation, in which you can fall into any addiction you want if you have resources.

golemotron 11y ago
I don't think it would be too much different either. The problem would be if there were negative externalities. That's likely if people try to shoot for meaning rather than addiction and find it in ways that hurt others. We've seen that throughout history with the young: gangs, terrorism, and revolution.

gshulegaard 11y ago

For me, I don't see this as being a problem. First, I am a believer in economic momentum and money multiplier dynamics (perhaps irrationally so). But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. Our current welfare system places too much restriction and I feel leaves too many welfare recipients with non-optimal purchasing decision...not to mention there is an overhead to our (America's) current welfare system as far as administration and what-else. Another thing is that there have been studies done which show that giving cash to the poor has better outcomes than expected: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-money-directly-poor-people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-... There are also deeper things we can theorize about regarding poor behavior, but at the end of the day I can't help but feel like a UBI would be a more efficient welfare distribution (more money spent actually issued as monetary welfare benefits) which would have a stronger economic impact than our current welfare system. Disclaimer: The above is just my opinion, not claiming it to be right or wrong.

humanrebar 11y ago
> But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. So what's your counter to the 'broken windows' objection? It's pertinent in this case because we're talking not about broken windows but broken (addicted, depressed, isolated) people.
- gshulegaard 11y ago
  That's a rather complicated question, but in general I think a lot of people tend to believe in a greater broken windows effect than actually manifests in practice...from the Economist article: > Mr Anoche’s first move on getting his windfall was to buy a new roof. Not only is thatch leaky, but it also needs to be replaced twice a year, at $40 a time. He spent half the money on his home, and half on timber and chickens. Those two businesses now turn a monthly profit of nearly $90. “If you’ve got the money and the mindset,” he says, “you can change your life.” > Of course, not all the money has gone on things that make development economists happy. Sitting on a rough bench in his moonshine bar in a banana grove, a tipsy Bernard Okumo says his wife used her windfall to bail him out of jail, where he was facing a murder charge. But the first independent study of Give Directly’s methods, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro (who is a former board member of Give Directly), suggests this sort of spending is unusual. In randomly selected poor households in 63 villages that have received the windfalls, they say, the number of children going without food for a day has fallen by over a third and livestock holdings have risen by half. A year after the scheme began, incomes have gone up by a quarter and recipients seem less stressed, according to tests of their cortisol levels. My own opinion still tends to believe that the net benefit will be positive, despite misapplications. At the moment the things I have read seem to indicate that while misuse occurs, it generally is the exception to the rule, not the other way around. Edit: I should also point out that UCT (Unconditional Cash Transfers) are concluded to only be part of the solution to poverty in the article. CCT (Conditional Cash Transfers) are also useful for correcting deeper systemic issues (such as undervaluing education in the poor).
  - 11y ago

throwaway2048 11y ago

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system. Well, not the entire point (there's lots of different reasons that people advocate UBI), but its certainly one of the points.
brbsix 11y ago
By unworthy I assume you mean unworthy of our support and sympathy? What differentiates the "19th century style" worthy and unworthy poor is that unworthy poor are thought to have made poor decisions and brought about their circumstances on themselves whereas the worthy poor were seen as suffering through little to no fault of their own. Prior to the welfare state (which makes no such distinction) the "unworthy poor" served as an example of what not to do. Do we really want to discard that wisdom (even more than we already have)? Put another way, is every poor person equally deserving of our support and sympathy? I would think not.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- c22 11y ago
  I think throwaway2048 meant something more along the lines of "worthy to participate in our society" and, unfortunately, whether you deem them worthy or not they are participants of society so reducing the friction of their interaction with society benefits all. (Friction rubs both ways.) The argument is that dropping this "distinction" could help lead to more pragmatically sound policies.
  - golemotron 11y ago

ebbv 11y ago

Yes and some people will spend their UBI on weapons and murder people. Does that mean we try to figure out who's going to be murders so we don't give them any money? Some people have problems. That doesn't mean you scrap a good thing just because you don't like dealing with problems.

golemotron 11y ago
No one said that. Reread my comment. What I said is that the cultural component needs to be addressed too.

ones_and_zeros 11y ago

For this to be a concern you'd have to believe that there are currently a significant amount of people that would "fall into various addictions" if only they could afford to...

golemotron 11y ago
When there's a deficit of meaning in people's lives, that's true.
- ones_and_zeros 11y ago
  The idea that addicts don't have meaning in their life is completely false. But, even if that were true, you'd have to think you are a pretty special snowflake to think that there are currently people that: a) have "a deficit of meaning" in their life (not sure where you come up with this stuff but keep it coming, I think it's great!) b) Once the stress of wage slavery is removed, they wouldn't spend time searching for meaning... just like everyone else does. I mean, where do you think friendship, purpose, spirituality, etc come from?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

dragonwriter 11y ago

> UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. I don't think you understand the problems it seeks to solve. Among the major problems it seeks to address (different advocates may not consider all of these important, and some may consider additional problems): (1) Means- and behavior-tested (and use-limited) welfare programs substitute external judgements of what will provide utility for the recipient for the recipients own judgement, and expend extensive resources applying the means- and behavior-tests, all of which causes significant inefficiencies. (2) Using minimum wage to reduce economic duress in the labor market, while it has some demonstrated value such that many UBI see it as a net positive compared to no policy to address economic duress, also has drawbacks in that it eliminates the possibility of work that provides a mutual benefit being done, without economic duress, where the pay would be low. UBI provides an alternative approach to address mitigate economic duress and thus allow more work that provides net economic benefit to be done. (3) Wealth and income inequality is accelerating, and in a way where the saying "a rising tide lifts all boats" is not an accurate reflection of the results, with virtually all of the gains in recent economic expansion going to the very top of the distribution, and this produces a variety of social harms, and is expected to be reinforced as automation and other economic changes continue to reduce the relative value of labor other than the most skilled (resulting in returns increasingly going to capital and shrinking pool of elite labor). Some mechanism to constrain this growing inequality is seen as desirable to address the social impacts.

TrevorJ 11y ago

TO me, they key problem you have to solve is: how do you avoid rent-seeking, and cost of living inflation? I'm not convinced UBI works in a free market.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> TO me, they key problem you have to solve is: how do you avoid rent-seeking, and cost of living inflation? You avoid rent-seeking by avoiding monopolies; competitive markets prevent rent-seeking. > and cost of living inflation? Monetary policy, the same way inflation is managed now. That aside, before considering any corrective changes in monetary policy, any UBI is likely to produce some level of upward pressure on prices, but at a level where buying power is still increased for people on the lower end of the distribution receiving UBI.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Where has this broken down with higher education then? Costs are rising in lock step with the availability of loans. Monopolies are not the reason that prices rise according to what the market will bear.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    For a number of reasons, higher ed supply is slow to react to increased demand (for any given student cohort; scaling out to serve different kinds of students with different demands is a slightly different story), which means you've got a low price elasticity of demand in ay least the short run. And, in fact, part of this is that largely higher education is monopolistic. Except at the very bottom tier, degrees from established institutions are not, in the market, as having equivalent substitutes when a new entrant comes into the market. The established reputation of institutions is a big part of what people are paying for.
    - TrevorJ 10y ago
      Those factors have nearly always been the case though, and do not explain the massive price inflations that have occurred in lock step with loan availability. The increases have also not been confined to top tier universities so the monopoly argument doesn't explain them.