6 ms·

"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for sing

"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare." How the hell does that happen politically? I would love to see basic income replacing a large portion of social programs in the states but no one seems to be talking about how we get from where we are to where we want to be, realistically.

VonGuard 10y ago
The thing is, I don't think it can happen politically. What is going on now is just the research stage so that we have some sort of data point for UBI supporters to latch onto. There are all sorts of groups inside the UBI tent, and many of them disagree with each other violently, but we're so far from a UBI that for now, everyone can agree on it in the broadest possible way. I, personally, have a completely different take on all of this from most UBI'ers. I take the long view: in 50 years, physical labor could be eliminated. WTF do we do when this happens? Do we relegate half of society to be homeless? Or do we begin the slow march towards eliminating work altogether. Few talk about this scenario, and those that do often tack on "... and then Skynet takes over and robots enslave us all." Yet, it's still a very valid discussion to be having. I think all this UBI research and interest is in furtherance of the elimination of work, altogether. That's not something that will happen over night, or even in 10 years, but in order for it to happen, humanity needs to begin gathering the data points necessary to enact a solution to the end of work problem. In the short term, this would eliminate social safety nets, but let's be honest, this is NEVER going to happen in America without a revolution of some kind. Whenever that happens, hopefully the UBI research will be far enough along to support a movement to enact it.
- CuriousSkeptic 10y ago
  I fear the question will be answered with some very dark times. Indeed what will people do, when most of them aren't actually "necessary", and what will they agree to, given that most of them will also be driven by fear of becoming one of those unnecessary ones? As things stands, politically, and culturally, it's more likely to become som dystopian story of cleansing. Walled communities of elites keeping the poor outside of civilized society, and perhaps even death camps. So I really do hope that we, along the way, not only get data on the economics of it, but also a new ethical mainstream regarding entitlement. Capitalism will be a rather dangerous as framework of ethics in a world where economic value is derived entirely from capital. Only the elite can justify their existance on that framework. I'm currently aligned with the geo-libertarian view of things, as an example of a dissenting UBI-proponent. It seems the "mainstream" UBI thinking at the moment is rather socialistic in nature. Don't really see how that can fare much better than the capitalistic views when faced with the proposition that 10% is supposed to pay for the other 90%
- aminok 10y ago
  >I, personally, have a completely different take on all of this from most UBI'ers. I take the long view: in 50 years, physical labor could be eliminated. WTF do we do when this happens? Do we relegate half of society to be homeless? Just because you can't imagine what people will do after physical labor is antiquated doesn't mean the average person, who you underestimate as a bumbling fool, will not come up with ways to earn an income.
- 97s 10y ago
  This is how I feel. A lot of people don't even think about this problem. Cost of living increasing with robots taking more and more nominal jobs that the lower class occupies the homeless rate is going to soar in the future. We are already seeing computers take lots of jobs due to the minimal pay increases in several states. A basic income is going to be the way of life or people are going to have to deal with millions of poor and an increase in crime. One of the things that bothers me about the saying, "I don't want to pay for all their stuff, I work hard." Is that people don't realize one of the reasons your able to work hard and not worry about your house getting robbed while your at work is that we take care of the poor and disabled. If you take away that care in the future because your too greedy to help out your fellow man, then you end up losing a lot of peace of mind as crime increases because of people having to steal for basic necessities.
brians 10y ago
UBI isn't a plausible replacement for those, because extreme medical care, and care for the disabled, is priced so far out of range with the rest. I expect part of the steps towards UBI to involve further evolution of our systems for allocating those resources.
- sambe 10y ago
  But insurance for those isn't.
  - DennisP 10y ago
    Just checked healthsherpa plan prices for a 64-year-old, and it came to almost $900/mo with a $5000 deductible. Maybe it's possible to radically reduce healthcare costs, but we should probably do that first before eliminating Medicare.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      The problem is eliminating Medicare is essentially a prerequisite to meaningfully reducing healthcare costs. As long as there is a deep pocket to pay whatever outrageous prices people are charged, people will keep getting charged outrageous prices. Take away the money and the price would come down in a hurry.
      - ptaipale 10y ago
        Is it really Medicare, or medical insurance in general? What you would need to solve this is socialized medical care supervised by the government, who takes from those who can contribute and gives to those who are in need. It wouldn't have to be completely run by the government but would have to be supervised by it.
        AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        > Is it really Medicare, or medical insurance in general? Medical insurance that works like Medicare obviously has the same problems. But imagine medical insurance where, instead of paying obscene premiums with a low deductible, you pay very low premiums with a deductible of several thousand dollars after which the insurance pays 80%. So if you get cancer you don't die of poverty but for pretty much anything else you're paying out of pocket, i.e. medical insurance, not a payment plan that hides true costs from everybody. Now the thing that costs $10,000 in one place and $4,000 in the other place is a difference you care about, so you pay the $4,000 (and so does everybody else), causing total medical costs to fall. You also eliminate all the insurance paperwork in any year you don't blow the deductible, allowing doctors to lower their own costs significantly.
maxerickson 10y ago
Yeah, it won't. The $10,000 left after the mandatory health payments would be a cut for many social security recipients, and many of those same people are also probably getting more than $3,000 a year in health care out of Medicare. Similar problems with Medicaid, it's worth a lot more than $3,000 to the people that are getting it (mostly because children). This is basically taking the desire to cut entitlement programs and rephrasing it to take advantage of the attention basic income is getting these days. I sort of expect the best thing the US can do right now to make life better and cheaper for the average citizen is to create/fund residency programs. More doctors will actually lead to lower prices. Pouring money into the demand side won't.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Not only will the voting public oppose many of these cuts, corporations (and lobbying groups representing professionals such as doctors, or AARP) will oppose them. And the latter is more ominous to me since they have the lobbying muscle in place. >create/fund residency programs Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and in given areas of practice? I am not optimistic about this given the lobbying groups' strong track record of protecting and furthering their self interest.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    If the public at large tells those lobbies to go screw, Congress will listen. So start talking about how we need more doctors in the US.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and in given areas of practice? Not really. The AMA is often blamed for limiting the number of medical school slots available, but they have nothing to do with that - it's capped by the AAMC, which has been very deliberately raising the number of medical school positions in the US for over a decade now. But even if that cap were lifted altogether, the number of practicing physicians would be completely unaffected, because we already have more MDs than we have residency slots available. Increasing residency programs would require funding, and currently Medicare is the source of funds for residency programs. Hospitals would typically make a loss on residency programs otherwise; contrary to what some people believe, they're actually quite expensive to operate.
clamprecht 10y ago
What if they just said "ok everyone born before 2017 will get the old system (social security, etc), and everyone born in 2017 or later will get the new system. This way everyone alive and voting isn't losing anything they were expecting before. There would be a period of 80-100 years during which both systems are intact, but this somewhat inefficient period would end, leaving only the basic income system.
- fernly 10y ago
  Regarding social security, that's good; it removes the entire AARP membership as no-voters. You could actually finesse it a bit by saying that anyone born after 2000 (so, turning 18 in 2018) will not be charged FICA when employed, and will not be eligible for SS when they retire -- AND anyone born after 1990 (or perhaps even earlier?) can also opt out, stop paying FICA, start getting BI, and get a tax credit good for their FICA payments to date. Retirees would stop entering the SS system in 2065 and the last survivors would finally die around 2101. The SS system would have to be funded for the rest of the century but for a declining number of beneficiaries. The other many, many forms of social payments and supplements need individual consideration. It's not all "welfare"; one small example that occurs to me is seriously handicapped (paraplegic, e.g.) people getting financial assistance to cover in-home care. Would the proposed BI adequately cover that? If it wouldn't, this small set of people would be significantly worse off.
mentos 10y ago
Can anyone explain what planets would have to align for a UBI to replace all of these programs?
- jdavis703 10y ago
  States will probably have to be allowed to opt-out of the current system, and then implement their own version.
zanny 10y ago
You get there by talking about it, and persuading people about it. There is no magical easy to way to bring about social change unless its profitable. And I'm not sure there are enough landlords foaming at the mouth for the legitimately juicy prospect of tenants with guaranteed paychecks to pay rent to push the issue against the tide of establishment profiteering resistance. But rather than talk about it on HN (like this) talk about it on Facebook or when talking to friends and family IRL. That is how you actually spread these ideas.
- harryf 10y ago
  The consequences of making this change are huge and IMHO hard to fully predict - or at least it's hard to have a meaningful debate about what the impact could be. Walmart for example could have a disaster on their hands - a whole swath of jobs no one really wants to do could quickly find themselves lacking staff. And that's just one example
  - Roboprog 10y ago
    I mostly agree. A few people would stick around to get the check and BI, but a lot of people would just say "Take this job and shove it!"
  - zanny 10y ago
    The Walmart example is a great one of why UBI is a good idea, though. Today they only have employees exclusively due to the "work or die" negotiation position of the workers there. With a UBI, Walmart will only have people filling positions when they offer wages that, at market value, justify the work being done. Which would also coincidentally mean treating your employees better lets you pay them less, which sounds like a desirable natural motivating force in an economy. I do not think anyone would argue UBI would not cause a dramatic shift in everything, and as a result the only way to really implement it is slowly - IE, you start people on small cash payments per month, and scale it up to (by most examples) the poverty level over the course of years or even a decade. That way, everyone has plenty of time to react to the economic consequences without a panic, in much the same way states are raising the minimum wage to $15 over 5 years.
nugget 10y ago
We can have either basic income or open borders/mass immigration -- but I don't see how we can have both.
- leepowers 10y ago
  Any UBI plan would need to require some form of citizenship verification. E-verify to get your 13k. We could then dial up or dial down the number of naturalized citizens per year to make the UBI program sustainable.
  - yuhong 10y ago
    I think it is better to have eg Canada/US do it at the same time.
dredmorbius 10y ago
It doesn't. I suspect this is poisoning the well.

VonGuard 10y ago

The thing is, I don't think it can happen politically. What is going on now is just the research stage so that we have some sort of data point for UBI supporters to latch onto. There are all sorts of groups inside the UBI tent, and many of them disagree with each other violently, but we're so far from a UBI that for now, everyone can agree on it in the broadest possible way. I, personally, have a completely different take on all of this from most UBI'ers. I take the long view: in 50 years, physical labor could be eliminated. WTF do we do when this happens? Do we relegate half of society to be homeless? Or do we begin the slow march towards eliminating work altogether. Few talk about this scenario, and those that do often tack on "... and then Skynet takes over and robots enslave us all." Yet, it's still a very valid discussion to be having. I think all this UBI research and interest is in furtherance of the elimination of work, altogether. That's not something that will happen over night, or even in 10 years, but in order for it to happen, humanity needs to begin gathering the data points necessary to enact a solution to the end of work problem. In the short term, this would eliminate social safety nets, but let's be honest, this is NEVER going to happen in America without a revolution of some kind. Whenever that happens, hopefully the UBI research will be far enough along to support a movement to enact it.

CuriousSkeptic 10y ago
I fear the question will be answered with some very dark times. Indeed what will people do, when most of them aren't actually "necessary", and what will they agree to, given that most of them will also be driven by fear of becoming one of those unnecessary ones? As things stands, politically, and culturally, it's more likely to become som dystopian story of cleansing. Walled communities of elites keeping the poor outside of civilized society, and perhaps even death camps. So I really do hope that we, along the way, not only get data on the economics of it, but also a new ethical mainstream regarding entitlement. Capitalism will be a rather dangerous as framework of ethics in a world where economic value is derived entirely from capital. Only the elite can justify their existance on that framework. I'm currently aligned with the geo-libertarian view of things, as an example of a dissenting UBI-proponent. It seems the "mainstream" UBI thinking at the moment is rather socialistic in nature. Don't really see how that can fare much better than the capitalistic views when faced with the proposition that 10% is supposed to pay for the other 90%
aminok 10y ago
>I, personally, have a completely different take on all of this from most UBI'ers. I take the long view: in 50 years, physical labor could be eliminated. WTF do we do when this happens? Do we relegate half of society to be homeless? Just because you can't imagine what people will do after physical labor is antiquated doesn't mean the average person, who you underestimate as a bumbling fool, will not come up with ways to earn an income.
97s 10y ago
This is how I feel. A lot of people don't even think about this problem. Cost of living increasing with robots taking more and more nominal jobs that the lower class occupies the homeless rate is going to soar in the future. We are already seeing computers take lots of jobs due to the minimal pay increases in several states. A basic income is going to be the way of life or people are going to have to deal with millions of poor and an increase in crime. One of the things that bothers me about the saying, "I don't want to pay for all their stuff, I work hard." Is that people don't realize one of the reasons your able to work hard and not worry about your house getting robbed while your at work is that we take care of the poor and disabled. If you take away that care in the future because your too greedy to help out your fellow man, then you end up losing a lot of peace of mind as crime increases because of people having to steal for basic necessities.

brians 10y ago

UBI isn't a plausible replacement for those, because extreme medical care, and care for the disabled, is priced so far out of range with the rest. I expect part of the steps towards UBI to involve further evolution of our systems for allocating those resources.

sambe 10y ago
But insurance for those isn't.
- DennisP 10y ago
  Just checked healthsherpa plan prices for a 64-year-old, and it came to almost $900/mo with a $5000 deductible. Maybe it's possible to radically reduce healthcare costs, but we should probably do that first before eliminating Medicare.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    The problem is eliminating Medicare is essentially a prerequisite to meaningfully reducing healthcare costs. As long as there is a deep pocket to pay whatever outrageous prices people are charged, people will keep getting charged outrageous prices. Take away the money and the price would come down in a hurry.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      Is it really Medicare, or medical insurance in general? What you would need to solve this is socialized medical care supervised by the government, who takes from those who can contribute and gives to those who are in need. It wouldn't have to be completely run by the government but would have to be supervised by it.
      - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        > Is it really Medicare, or medical insurance in general? Medical insurance that works like Medicare obviously has the same problems. But imagine medical insurance where, instead of paying obscene premiums with a low deductible, you pay very low premiums with a deductible of several thousand dollars after which the insurance pays 80%. So if you get cancer you don't die of poverty but for pretty much anything else you're paying out of pocket, i.e. medical insurance, not a payment plan that hides true costs from everybody. Now the thing that costs $10,000 in one place and $4,000 in the other place is a difference you care about, so you pay the $4,000 (and so does everybody else), causing total medical costs to fall. You also eliminate all the insurance paperwork in any year you don't blow the deductible, allowing doctors to lower their own costs significantly.

maxerickson 10y ago

Yeah, it won't. The $10,000 left after the mandatory health payments would be a cut for many social security recipients, and many of those same people are also probably getting more than $3,000 a year in health care out of Medicare. Similar problems with Medicaid, it's worth a lot more than $3,000 to the people that are getting it (mostly because children). This is basically taking the desire to cut entitlement programs and rephrasing it to take advantage of the attention basic income is getting these days. I sort of expect the best thing the US can do right now to make life better and cheaper for the average citizen is to create/fund residency programs. More doctors will actually lead to lower prices. Pouring money into the demand side won't.

hkmurakami 10y ago
Not only will the voting public oppose many of these cuts, corporations (and lobbying groups representing professionals such as doctors, or AARP) will oppose them. And the latter is more ominous to me since they have the lobbying muscle in place. >create/fund residency programs Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and in given areas of practice? I am not optimistic about this given the lobbying groups' strong track record of protecting and furthering their self interest.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  If the public at large tells those lobbies to go screw, Congress will listen. So start talking about how we need more doctors in the US.
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and in given areas of practice? Not really. The AMA is often blamed for limiting the number of medical school slots available, but they have nothing to do with that - it's capped by the AAMC, which has been very deliberately raising the number of medical school positions in the US for over a decade now. But even if that cap were lifted altogether, the number of practicing physicians would be completely unaffected, because we already have more MDs than we have residency slots available. Increasing residency programs would require funding, and currently Medicare is the source of funds for residency programs. Hospitals would typically make a loss on residency programs otherwise; contrary to what some people believe, they're actually quite expensive to operate.

clamprecht 10y ago

What if they just said "ok everyone born before 2017 will get the old system (social security, etc), and everyone born in 2017 or later will get the new system. This way everyone alive and voting isn't losing anything they were expecting before. There would be a period of 80-100 years during which both systems are intact, but this somewhat inefficient period would end, leaving only the basic income system.

fernly 10y ago
Regarding social security, that's good; it removes the entire AARP membership as no-voters. You could actually finesse it a bit by saying that anyone born after 2000 (so, turning 18 in 2018) will not be charged FICA when employed, and will not be eligible for SS when they retire -- AND anyone born after 1990 (or perhaps even earlier?) can also opt out, stop paying FICA, start getting BI, and get a tax credit good for their FICA payments to date. Retirees would stop entering the SS system in 2065 and the last survivors would finally die around 2101. The SS system would have to be funded for the rest of the century but for a declining number of beneficiaries. The other many, many forms of social payments and supplements need individual consideration. It's not all "welfare"; one small example that occurs to me is seriously handicapped (paraplegic, e.g.) people getting financial assistance to cover in-home care. Would the proposed BI adequately cover that? If it wouldn't, this small set of people would be significantly worse off.

mentos 10y ago

Can anyone explain what planets would have to align for a UBI to replace all of these programs?

jdavis703 10y ago
States will probably have to be allowed to opt-out of the current system, and then implement their own version.

zanny 10y ago

You get there by talking about it, and persuading people about it. There is no magical easy to way to bring about social change unless its profitable. And I'm not sure there are enough landlords foaming at the mouth for the legitimately juicy prospect of tenants with guaranteed paychecks to pay rent to push the issue against the tide of establishment profiteering resistance. But rather than talk about it on HN (like this) talk about it on Facebook or when talking to friends and family IRL. That is how you actually spread these ideas.

harryf 10y ago
The consequences of making this change are huge and IMHO hard to fully predict - or at least it's hard to have a meaningful debate about what the impact could be. Walmart for example could have a disaster on their hands - a whole swath of jobs no one really wants to do could quickly find themselves lacking staff. And that's just one example
- Roboprog 10y ago
  I mostly agree. A few people would stick around to get the check and BI, but a lot of people would just say "Take this job and shove it!"
- zanny 10y ago
  The Walmart example is a great one of why UBI is a good idea, though. Today they only have employees exclusively due to the "work or die" negotiation position of the workers there. With a UBI, Walmart will only have people filling positions when they offer wages that, at market value, justify the work being done. Which would also coincidentally mean treating your employees better lets you pay them less, which sounds like a desirable natural motivating force in an economy. I do not think anyone would argue UBI would not cause a dramatic shift in everything, and as a result the only way to really implement it is slowly - IE, you start people on small cash payments per month, and scale it up to (by most examples) the poverty level over the course of years or even a decade. That way, everyone has plenty of time to react to the economic consequences without a panic, in much the same way states are raising the minimum wage to $15 over 5 years.

nugget 10y ago

We can have either basic income or open borders/mass immigration -- but I don't see how we can have both.

leepowers 10y ago
Any UBI plan would need to require some form of citizenship verification. E-verify to get your 13k. We could then dial up or dial down the number of naturalized citizens per year to make the UBI program sustainable.
- yuhong 10y ago
  I think it is better to have eg Canada/US do it at the same time.

dredmorbius 10y ago

It doesn't. I suspect this is poisoning the well.