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Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which

by danbruc 10y ago

Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then have sufficient minimum wages, there is no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living. Also universality, what is the point? Above some income you are essentially just paying yourself. There might be a technical point because it keeps the rules simple but besides that I don't see in which way absolute universality is a feature. Reduce the overhead from many different social programs, for state and citizen? Fair point, but then again an universal basic income seems quite a huge hammer.

blazespin 10y ago
"Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half" That doesn't work. The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way. Increasing minimum wages will only just accelerate automation and exacerbate the problem. My concern about UBI is that it won't properly track inflation and will quickly become not enough and all the welfare programs are gone, so people are doubly screwed. Other than that, I like it. I'd like to see more "pay to go to school" programs, though. We'd end up with fewer Trumps...
- danbruc 10y ago
  The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way. That is only a real problem if the population does not keep up with this development. I can not tell whether requirements are (now) growing faster then capabilities but both certainly grew ever since. The other thing is that it seems to me that - at least to some extend - the capabilities are the controlling factor here. The economy can demand whatever it needs, if it is not available the economy will have to adopt. Increasing minimum wages will only just accelerate automation and exacerbate the problem. I did not mean to increase minimum wages more and more just to make any job viable, this of course only leads to inflation. I meant to let non-viable [EDIT: This read »no viable« before.] jobs die or automate. If people are not willing to pay enough for getting their lawn mowed - not sure if that is a good example - to make a living from it, then there never was a market for lawn mowing. Subsidizing it by the rest of the population with government benefits of any kind is not a solution.
  - mac01021 10y ago
    > I meant to let no viable jobs die or automate. Are you saying you'd outlaw self-service gas pumps and checkout stations? Robotic assembly lines and autonomous vehicles? A large fraction of the population has no distinguishing skills. That segment of the population is going to find itself with ever fewer ways to earn a living.
    - danbruc 10y ago
      That was meant to read »non-viable«, i.e. if customers are not willing to pay enough for a product or service so that a full time worker can live on the salary, then efficiency must improve, the job must be automate away entirely or the business must go out of business. I consider neither simply exploiting the employees nor subsidizing the business and customers by giving benefits to the employees a good solution. Besides that I am not sure about you comment, I am not sure how you interpreted my comment with the spelling error. I am especially confused because your first paragraph sounds like you are arguing for automation, the second paragraphs sounds like you consider it harmful for unskilled workers. I don't want to outlaw any automation, quite the opposite, I would consider the ultimate goal a world where all work is done by robots and nobody has to work.
      - sokoloff 10y ago
        What's wrong with letting the work be done at a market rate lower than the current (ideally abolished) minimum wage? I'd pay someone $5/hr to pull weeds, but I won't pay them $10 or $15/hr. Now, in which system can a neighbor earn an extra $20 a week for a morning of work? In which system does my front garden look nicer from the sidewalk? Someone (probably a teen) gets some walking around money, the whole neighborhood gets a nicer sidewalk view, and I don't have to do an optional job that I dislike. Sounds like a winner all around to me, but no way is "pulling weeds" a full-time, live alone and without additional support career.
        danbruc 10y ago
        I mentioned that in another comment, there are certainly a lot of cases like your example where it makes no or not much sense to apply a minimum wage. I want the minimum wage to target specifically normal (full time) employment. An employer should not be able to pocket most of the money for say selling relatively expensive cloths but pay shitty wages to its sewers. You might argue that employees are free to negotiate wages and free to not accept bad conditions, but that easily fails if, for example, there is a surplus of possible employees. Sure, it is an important mechanism to reduce costs for consumers, but that should in my mind not come at the expenses of the employees.
- mac01021 10y ago
  > My concern about UBI is that it won't properly track inflation Have the Fed stop causing inflation?
gizmo 10y ago
I think these are exactly the right observations. It's no coincidence that a lot of advocacy for the UBI comes from the far right who want to use it as a pretext to dismantle the welfare state. Conventional social programs are not perfect, but they exist to address specific issues and mostly do their job well. The efficiency gains to be made here are minimal. The real cost savings are made by simply paying the needy less. Just look at Murray's proposal. All social programs get eliminated and now a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Impossible; a cruel joke. An elderly person on disability? They get half the money a healthy 22yo couple gets. This isn't a serious proposal.
- mac01021 10y ago
  > a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Actually, under Murray's proposal, she has to make do with 10k per year plus whatever she can earn. If she's earning very, then she's probably doing all the childcare herself and her living costs are not much more than a single, childless woman. If she works full time, then her total income (earned and unearned) will be 30k at minimum. I'm not saying I support the proposal, but I do think your rhetorical question mischaracterizes it.
  - gizmo 10y ago
    The point is when you give the same subsidies to a healthy 22 year old who lives with his parents and a single mother of three, we're dealing with one of two situations: 1) the subsidies are sufficient for both groups to do OK. This is fine in theory, but taxes would have to go up by a lot to have the minimum take care of the needy with the largest expenses. The UBI would have to be closer to 25,000 USD. If it's politically impossible to raise taxes to the level needed to let poor people live in dignity today, then what are the odds the American people sign off on the massive tax hikes needed to fund a non-destitution basic income? 2) the UBI simply isn't sufficient. Some people are getting money they don't need and other people are getting much less than they need just to survive. Every dollar that goes to the first group means there's less for those who really need it. In other words, the proposed system is a cruel dismantling of the welfare state. Raising 3 children is practically a full time job, just one that happens to be unpaid. With the UBI the minimum wage would go away, meaning that the single mother is going to make a few dollars an hour in her part time job. That will barely cover the cost of the car she needs to get to her job, and the cost of the babysitter. The suggestion that being a single mother isn't much more expensive than a being a single young adult is absurd. I really struggle to respond to this. Just think about it: a single person can share an apartment and bike everywhere, enjoy the simple bohemian lifestyle. Being a beach bum doesn't cost anything. Do side jobs and hustle whenever you need a few bucks. The single mother in contrast needs a car and a house with rooms, just to start. That's going to take a big chunk out of the 10,000. Just living nearby a school is already expensive, and not optional. And the children themselves cost money too, in a million little ways. Diapers, clothing, entertainment, food, trips to the doctor, the list is endless. I don't believe I'm misrepresenting the situation, this is just how the math works out. If the UBI means giving money to people who don't really need it then taxes must go up by a lot or the poor are getting a really raw deal.
gizmo686 10y ago
>Well then cut down working hours. This introduces inefficiency. One worker working 8 hours is more useful than 2 workers working 4 hours. While this might end up being a good trade off (as workers might be willing to sell 4 hours of work for less than half the price of 8 hours), attempting to legislate this would be a market distortion. >Then have sufficient minimum wages. Minimum wages distort the market. >Also universality, what is the point? The "universality" has two components. One is that there are no strings attached (eg. you are not required to be seeking employment). The other one is that it is not dependent on your income. As I explained in another comment, making a BI decrease as ones income increases is equivalent to a progressive tax. As we already have a progressive tax system, we can achieve the same result by modify our tax brackets, which is mathematically equivalent but easier to understand.
- danbruc 10y ago
  This introduces inefficiency. One worker working 8 hours is more useful than 2 workers working 4 hours. While this might end up being a good trade off (as workers might be willing to sell 4 hours of work for less than half the price of 8 hours), attempting to legislate this would be a market distortion. What does inefficiency matter if there is not enough work for everyone anyway? It may be a problem during the transition but I am not sure about that. But in the end two people working five hours each seems a better and fairer solution to me than one working eight hours and giving half of what he produced to the other guy for free. Minimum wages distort the market. Why? I am not arguing for arbitrarily high minimum wages, just high enough to be able to make a living. Working for less makes no sense - if you work full time and can not live from the income, what is the point? It's exploitation, slavery if you like. If the state provides benefits to make it a livable income, then the tax payers are just subsidizing your employer or customer. I am here not worrying about all the edge case, being frech out of school with little experience, already having enough money and voluntarily working for little or no money and whatnot. The "universality" has two components. One is that there are no strings attached (eg. you are not required to be seeking employment). This is feature and bug. It will for example remove incentives to get a job but it will also allow you to take time to develop a new product or something like that. I am neutral on that. The other one is that it is not dependent on your income. As I explained in another comment, making a BI decrease as ones income increases is equivalent to a progressive tax. As we already have a progressive tax system, we can achieve the same result by modify our tax brackets, which is mathematically equivalent but easier to understand. I am not sure what you want to say here, seems like it does no harm and provides no benefits.
dwc 10y ago
You're overthinking it a bit. What it does it remove the worry that you're going to starve or have no place to live, or take you from subsistence to a level that you can invest in the future. That's all. Perhaps that's enough. Whether this "solves" anything depends. Initial experiments are very limited, but fairly positive. Giving money to people in rural India may not translate too well to giving money to people in New Delhi, much less people in Cleveland. But I think it's worth a try to see how things work out.
- danbruc 10y ago
  What it does it remove the worry that you're going to starve or have no place to live, or take you from subsistence to a level that you can invest in the future. That's all. Perhaps that's enough. If your income drops below 404.00 Euro per month plus rent in Germany, you get the difference. Nobody will become homeless, nobody will starve. At least in theory. They will bug you to get a job as quickly as possible, make you do courses to improve your skills. The authorities are said to be kind of control freaks, supposedly to avoid abuse. So it is a basic income. Universal? Well, the authorities won't just let you develop you new product idea for two years. If you don't try to get a job, they will bug you a lot. If you don't play by the rules, they can even cut some of the benefits. So maybe we should just add a program that allows you to ask for benefits for a certain amount of time so that you can develop a business idea. Maybe there are already things like that. You certainly can get support if you want to educate yourself, attend a university and so on.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    Much of the appeal of UBI is that there is no massive government pork program to determine eligibility, track compliance with rules, etc. The "U" is important to many of us, provided it allows the disassembly of the massive bureaucracy present today.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
>there is no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living Artwork, open source software, charity work...
- danbruc 10y ago
  That is of course valuable to other people or the society and it may also be valuable to you because you enjoy doing it. But that is not what I meant. When you do some work to make a living, then you have to earn enough to live on the income. What is the point of working full time and then starving anyway? What you can do voluntarily is not affected in any way, you can make paintings and write open source software for no money as long as you want.
trothamel 10y ago
The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence. The argument is that at some point, the skill level required to justify an income becomes so high, large portions of the populace become unable to meet that bar. You can't simply cut down working hours, since the problem isn't that there aren't enough jobs for people - it's that there are people who are unable to be productive enough to fill a job. The UBI gradually transfers responsibility for someone from the government to an employer, as opposed to a minimum wage + welfare system, where the transfer is a lot more sharp. (I haven't decided if I agree with this, and how plausible it actually is - but I think this is the argument for why UBIs are necessary, and necessary now.)
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence. "We'll just automate your job away" is one of the biggest empty threats along with "we'll just fire everybody, causing mass unemployment". Employers fear a rising minimum wage because it eats into their profits. That fear translates into histrionics, threats and utopianistic predictions about the near future state of robot technology. In the end when it happens they just deal with it and end up posting lower profits. As is the case in Seattle.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    Have you seen the new McD's ordering kiosks? They're definitely there, and I find I prefer them to the previous cashier experience. That combination looks bad for fast food front of house workers...
    - crdoconnor 10y ago
      I have. Have you seen the equivalents of McD's kiosks from 1890's Berlin? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat#/media/File:StollwerckAutomatenrestaurant1896.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat#/media/File:Stollwerck... Those things are bound to replace most food service workers by the 1920s at the very latest.
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Which doesn't work when jobs require uncommon abilities or highly specialized training and thus either can't be done by the other people or would be highly inefficient to train them to do and then not have them working full time. > Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then have sufficient minimum wages, there is no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living. And then any jobs whose economic value is below that minimum wage disappear, leading back to the first problem. > Also universality, what is the point? Above some income you are essentially just paying yourself. You are. Which means it has a built in phase out -- you effectively stop getting it once you've paid more taxes than you receive in basic income. Adding another phase out causes the marginal tax rate on middle income people to be unreasonably high and takes money away from them that would otherwise have come from higher income people. A universal basic income has rich people paying poor people and middle income people paying themselves. A basic income with a phase out instead has middle income people paying poor people so the rich can have a tax cut.
- danbruc 10y ago
  I won't address the first to points, they came already up in other comments and made me change my position a bit. A universal basic income has rich people paying poor people and middle income people paying themselves. A basic income with a phase out instead has middle income people paying poor people so the rich can have a tax cut. This does not have to be true. You can simply phase it out and then adjust the tax structure accordingly. It is a zero sum game, you lower taxes by the same amount you cut the basic income for that person. At the high end you take away 11k basic income and reduce taxes by 11k, somewhere in the middle you reduce the basic income and taxes by 6k each and at the lower end you do nothing. With matching tax structures there is really no difference between paying an universal basic income to everyone or only paying it towards the lower income range. I am not disagreeing that a flat basic income might be a lot simpler than trying to carefully adjust tax rates.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago

by danbruc 10y ago

blazespin 10y ago

"Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half" That doesn't work. The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way. Increasing minimum wages will only just accelerate automation and exacerbate the problem. My concern about UBI is that it won't properly track inflation and will quickly become not enough and all the welfare programs are gone, so people are doubly screwed. Other than that, I like it. I'd like to see more "pay to go to school" programs, though. We'd end up with fewer Trumps...

danbruc 10y ago
The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way. That is only a real problem if the population does not keep up with this development. I can not tell whether requirements are (now) growing faster then capabilities but both certainly grew ever since. The other thing is that it seems to me that - at least to some extend - the capabilities are the controlling factor here. The economy can demand whatever it needs, if it is not available the economy will have to adopt. Increasing minimum wages will only just accelerate automation and exacerbate the problem. I did not mean to increase minimum wages more and more just to make any job viable, this of course only leads to inflation. I meant to let non-viable [EDIT: This read »no viable« before.] jobs die or automate. If people are not willing to pay enough for getting their lawn mowed - not sure if that is a good example - to make a living from it, then there never was a market for lawn mowing. Subsidizing it by the rest of the population with government benefits of any kind is not a solution.
- mac01021 10y ago
  > I meant to let no viable jobs die or automate. Are you saying you'd outlaw self-service gas pumps and checkout stations? Robotic assembly lines and autonomous vehicles? A large fraction of the population has no distinguishing skills. That segment of the population is going to find itself with ever fewer ways to earn a living.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    That was meant to read »non-viable«, i.e. if customers are not willing to pay enough for a product or service so that a full time worker can live on the salary, then efficiency must improve, the job must be automate away entirely or the business must go out of business. I consider neither simply exploiting the employees nor subsidizing the business and customers by giving benefits to the employees a good solution. Besides that I am not sure about you comment, I am not sure how you interpreted my comment with the spelling error. I am especially confused because your first paragraph sounds like you are arguing for automation, the second paragraphs sounds like you consider it harmful for unskilled workers. I don't want to outlaw any automation, quite the opposite, I would consider the ultimate goal a world where all work is done by robots and nobody has to work.
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      What's wrong with letting the work be done at a market rate lower than the current (ideally abolished) minimum wage? I'd pay someone $5/hr to pull weeds, but I won't pay them $10 or $15/hr. Now, in which system can a neighbor earn an extra $20 a week for a morning of work? In which system does my front garden look nicer from the sidewalk? Someone (probably a teen) gets some walking around money, the whole neighborhood gets a nicer sidewalk view, and I don't have to do an optional job that I dislike. Sounds like a winner all around to me, but no way is "pulling weeds" a full-time, live alone and without additional support career.
      - danbruc 10y ago
        I mentioned that in another comment, there are certainly a lot of cases like your example where it makes no or not much sense to apply a minimum wage. I want the minimum wage to target specifically normal (full time) employment. An employer should not be able to pocket most of the money for say selling relatively expensive cloths but pay shitty wages to its sewers. You might argue that employees are free to negotiate wages and free to not accept bad conditions, but that easily fails if, for example, there is a surplus of possible employees. Sure, it is an important mechanism to reduce costs for consumers, but that should in my mind not come at the expenses of the employees.
mac01021 10y ago
> My concern about UBI is that it won't properly track inflation Have the Fed stop causing inflation?

gizmo 10y ago

I think these are exactly the right observations. It's no coincidence that a lot of advocacy for the UBI comes from the far right who want to use it as a pretext to dismantle the welfare state. Conventional social programs are not perfect, but they exist to address specific issues and mostly do their job well. The efficiency gains to be made here are minimal. The real cost savings are made by simply paying the needy less. Just look at Murray's proposal. All social programs get eliminated and now a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Impossible; a cruel joke. An elderly person on disability? They get half the money a healthy 22yo couple gets. This isn't a serious proposal.

mac01021 10y ago
> a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Actually, under Murray's proposal, she has to make do with 10k per year plus whatever she can earn. If she's earning very, then she's probably doing all the childcare herself and her living costs are not much more than a single, childless woman. If she works full time, then her total income (earned and unearned) will be 30k at minimum. I'm not saying I support the proposal, but I do think your rhetorical question mischaracterizes it.
- gizmo 10y ago
  The point is when you give the same subsidies to a healthy 22 year old who lives with his parents and a single mother of three, we're dealing with one of two situations: 1) the subsidies are sufficient for both groups to do OK. This is fine in theory, but taxes would have to go up by a lot to have the minimum take care of the needy with the largest expenses. The UBI would have to be closer to 25,000 USD. If it's politically impossible to raise taxes to the level needed to let poor people live in dignity today, then what are the odds the American people sign off on the massive tax hikes needed to fund a non-destitution basic income? 2) the UBI simply isn't sufficient. Some people are getting money they don't need and other people are getting much less than they need just to survive. Every dollar that goes to the first group means there's less for those who really need it. In other words, the proposed system is a cruel dismantling of the welfare state. Raising 3 children is practically a full time job, just one that happens to be unpaid. With the UBI the minimum wage would go away, meaning that the single mother is going to make a few dollars an hour in her part time job. That will barely cover the cost of the car she needs to get to her job, and the cost of the babysitter. The suggestion that being a single mother isn't much more expensive than a being a single young adult is absurd. I really struggle to respond to this. Just think about it: a single person can share an apartment and bike everywhere, enjoy the simple bohemian lifestyle. Being a beach bum doesn't cost anything. Do side jobs and hustle whenever you need a few bucks. The single mother in contrast needs a car and a house with rooms, just to start. That's going to take a big chunk out of the 10,000. Just living nearby a school is already expensive, and not optional. And the children themselves cost money too, in a million little ways. Diapers, clothing, entertainment, food, trips to the doctor, the list is endless. I don't believe I'm misrepresenting the situation, this is just how the math works out. If the UBI means giving money to people who don't really need it then taxes must go up by a lot or the poor are getting a really raw deal.

gizmo686 10y ago

>Well then cut down working hours. This introduces inefficiency. One worker working 8 hours is more useful than 2 workers working 4 hours. While this might end up being a good trade off (as workers might be willing to sell 4 hours of work for less than half the price of 8 hours), attempting to legislate this would be a market distortion. >Then have sufficient minimum wages. Minimum wages distort the market. >Also universality, what is the point? The "universality" has two components. One is that there are no strings attached (eg. you are not required to be seeking employment). The other one is that it is not dependent on your income. As I explained in another comment, making a BI decrease as ones income increases is equivalent to a progressive tax. As we already have a progressive tax system, we can achieve the same result by modify our tax brackets, which is mathematically equivalent but easier to understand.

danbruc 10y ago
This introduces inefficiency. One worker working 8 hours is more useful than 2 workers working 4 hours. While this might end up being a good trade off (as workers might be willing to sell 4 hours of work for less than half the price of 8 hours), attempting to legislate this would be a market distortion. What does inefficiency matter if there is not enough work for everyone anyway? It may be a problem during the transition but I am not sure about that. But in the end two people working five hours each seems a better and fairer solution to me than one working eight hours and giving half of what he produced to the other guy for free. Minimum wages distort the market. Why? I am not arguing for arbitrarily high minimum wages, just high enough to be able to make a living. Working for less makes no sense - if you work full time and can not live from the income, what is the point? It's exploitation, slavery if you like. If the state provides benefits to make it a livable income, then the tax payers are just subsidizing your employer or customer. I am here not worrying about all the edge case, being frech out of school with little experience, already having enough money and voluntarily working for little or no money and whatnot. The "universality" has two components. One is that there are no strings attached (eg. you are not required to be seeking employment). This is feature and bug. It will for example remove incentives to get a job but it will also allow you to take time to develop a new product or something like that. I am neutral on that. The other one is that it is not dependent on your income. As I explained in another comment, making a BI decrease as ones income increases is equivalent to a progressive tax. As we already have a progressive tax system, we can achieve the same result by modify our tax brackets, which is mathematically equivalent but easier to understand. I am not sure what you want to say here, seems like it does no harm and provides no benefits.

dwc 10y ago

You're overthinking it a bit. What it does it remove the worry that you're going to starve or have no place to live, or take you from subsistence to a level that you can invest in the future. That's all. Perhaps that's enough. Whether this "solves" anything depends. Initial experiments are very limited, but fairly positive. Giving money to people in rural India may not translate too well to giving money to people in New Delhi, much less people in Cleveland. But I think it's worth a try to see how things work out.

danbruc 10y ago
What it does it remove the worry that you're going to starve or have no place to live, or take you from subsistence to a level that you can invest in the future. That's all. Perhaps that's enough. If your income drops below 404.00 Euro per month plus rent in Germany, you get the difference. Nobody will become homeless, nobody will starve. At least in theory. They will bug you to get a job as quickly as possible, make you do courses to improve your skills. The authorities are said to be kind of control freaks, supposedly to avoid abuse. So it is a basic income. Universal? Well, the authorities won't just let you develop you new product idea for two years. If you don't try to get a job, they will bug you a lot. If you don't play by the rules, they can even cut some of the benefits. So maybe we should just add a program that allows you to ask for benefits for a certain amount of time so that you can develop a business idea. Maybe there are already things like that. You certainly can get support if you want to educate yourself, attend a university and so on.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Much of the appeal of UBI is that there is no massive government pork program to determine eligibility, track compliance with rules, etc. The "U" is important to many of us, provided it allows the disassembly of the massive bureaucracy present today.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

>there is no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living Artwork, open source software, charity work...

danbruc 10y ago
That is of course valuable to other people or the society and it may also be valuable to you because you enjoy doing it. But that is not what I meant. When you do some work to make a living, then you have to earn enough to live on the income. What is the point of working full time and then starving anyway? What you can do voluntarily is not affected in any way, you can make paintings and write open source software for no money as long as you want.

trothamel 10y ago

The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence. The argument is that at some point, the skill level required to justify an income becomes so high, large portions of the populace become unable to meet that bar. You can't simply cut down working hours, since the problem isn't that there aren't enough jobs for people - it's that there are people who are unable to be productive enough to fill a job. The UBI gradually transfers responsibility for someone from the government to an employer, as opposed to a minimum wage + welfare system, where the transfer is a lot more sharp. (I haven't decided if I agree with this, and how plausible it actually is - but I think this is the argument for why UBIs are necessary, and necessary now.)

crdoconnor 10y ago
>The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence. "We'll just automate your job away" is one of the biggest empty threats along with "we'll just fire everybody, causing mass unemployment". Employers fear a rising minimum wage because it eats into their profits. That fear translates into histrionics, threats and utopianistic predictions about the near future state of robot technology. In the end when it happens they just deal with it and end up posting lower profits. As is the case in Seattle.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Have you seen the new McD's ordering kiosks? They're definitely there, and I find I prefer them to the previous cashier experience. That combination looks bad for fast food front of house workers...
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    I have. Have you seen the equivalents of McD's kiosks from 1890's Berlin? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat#/media/File:StollwerckAutomatenrestaurant1896.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat#/media/File:Stollwerck... Those things are bound to replace most food service workers by the 1920s at the very latest.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Which doesn't work when jobs require uncommon abilities or highly specialized training and thus either can't be done by the other people or would be highly inefficient to train them to do and then not have them working full time. > Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then have sufficient minimum wages, there is no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living. And then any jobs whose economic value is below that minimum wage disappear, leading back to the first problem. > Also universality, what is the point? Above some income you are essentially just paying yourself. You are. Which means it has a built in phase out -- you effectively stop getting it once you've paid more taxes than you receive in basic income. Adding another phase out causes the marginal tax rate on middle income people to be unreasonably high and takes money away from them that would otherwise have come from higher income people. A universal basic income has rich people paying poor people and middle income people paying themselves. A basic income with a phase out instead has middle income people paying poor people so the rich can have a tax cut.

danbruc 10y ago
I won't address the first to points, they came already up in other comments and made me change my position a bit. A universal basic income has rich people paying poor people and middle income people paying themselves. A basic income with a phase out instead has middle income people paying poor people so the rich can have a tax cut. This does not have to be true. You can simply phase it out and then adjust the tax structure accordingly. It is a zero sum game, you lower taxes by the same amount you cut the basic income for that person. At the high end you take away 11k basic income and reduce taxes by 11k, somewhere in the middle you reduce the basic income and taxes by 6k each and at the lower end you do nothing. With matching tax structures there is really no difference between paying an universal basic income to everyone or only paying it towards the lower income range. I am not disagreeing that a flat basic income might be a lot simpler than trying to carefully adjust tax rates.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago