7 ms·

Universal Basic Income – Poll Results from IGM Economic Experts Panel

42 points by cjlars 10y ago

jaimeyap 10y ago
The formulation of the question frames Social Security and Medicare as being mutually exclusive with a UBI. UBI ought to replace things like food stamps and welfare. Not healthcare or retirement benefits! I am a huge fan of UBI, and I would have voted "disagree" the way that question was framed. A better formulation would be to frame UBI as an "automation dividend". Where we dip into increased efficiencies produced by automating labor to fund a basic income.
- eanzenberg 10y ago
  How do you reconcile the massive increase in spending this would cause?
  - Retric 10y ago
    A flater tax rate would make up a large chunk of the difference. Basicly, at 50k you still get UBI, but it's offset by new taxes to leave your after tax income more or less the same. At 25k, you pay a lot more in taxes, but get a UBI for a net gain. At 0k you just get UBI, not food stamps ect. There would probably be a net cost increase, but as SS counts as regular income it's not going to be huge for most retires. At some UBI levels it's actually less than our current system. Programs to be removed, food stamps, HUD, welfare, unemployment insurance, Medical disability part of SS, and all the overhead associated with them. PS: The economic gain from social mobility would likely be huge as long as you don't adjust UBI for locations. Why be poor in NY when you can live well in a cheap part of Florida.
    - wang_li 10y ago
      I thought the U stood for universal. If you take it back in new taxes, it's just a transfer program from productive to non-productive.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        It often stands for unconditional.
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        It's a transfer from productive to non-productive under all possible setups. How were you imagining it would be funded?
      - deathanatos 10y ago
        But I have to echo eanzenberg's comment, > How do you reconcile the massive increase in spending this would cause? If you're giving each person $13k/yr, does that not imply that you must then collect $13k/yr/person in taxes? Unless you're thinking it is all going to come from corporate taxes, then at least some of it must come from a citizen's taxes, no? (and if you do think this should come from corporations, do you not think that would have an effect on what gets passed to an employee? Why not pay a person $13k/yr less? — or more, since some people won't/can't work and we must cover them too?) I have no idea if UBI is a good idea or not … but if people want to do it, I expect to know how it will be paid for.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        You can just print the money or otherwise conjure it into existence. For instance, by telling banks to change numbers in their databases. It probably isn't a good idea, but it's possible.
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        That's still a transfer from productive people to unproductive people. It just takes the specific form of hyperinflation. There is no difference between taxing everyone 20% of their holdings, and printing yourself 25% of everyone else's holdings. Either way you end up with a fifth of the wealth, and everyone's purchasing power goes down so yours can go up.
        10y ago
    - cheald 10y ago
      You're effectively describing a negative income tax, not UBI.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        There's a whole miasma of overlapping ideas. Lots of people propose a negative income tax as a way to implement a UBI.
      - Retric 10y ago
        I am not sure there is a difference as UBI's must be funded. At least in the US, oil states for example have a somewhat independent income stream.
  - 1024core 10y ago
    I keep asking the same question; and all I get, basically, is that the money will just appear from somewhere. What will happen to all the non-profits and government departments that are built around providing "services" to the poor, homeless, etc.? It's a huge industry, and it's not going down without a fight. In the meantime, you have added a few trillion dollars in annual spending to the budget.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > It's a huge industry, and it's not going down without a fight. It's not just that it's 'not going down without a fight' - these services are essential for people in need. These services provide them with more than just financial assistance. Given them money (and doing away with the services) only solves the problem if you assume that lack of money is the only problem. Which it's not - it's one aspect of the problem, but not the only issue for people in need.
    - malka 10y ago
      UBI may not totally clear the homeless problem. Many of them are insane person without any care.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Depends on the costs. If automation can push down food costs to minuscule levels (like a solar powered, robot-run, indoor greenhouse), you won't need to take as much in taxes. Granted, housing is often much more expensive relative to income - especially to the poor and working class - but that doesn't mean there can't be mass-produced, high density housing units. UBI really could work, but right now I don't think the costs of completely sustaining societies are low enough to keep the tax increases from chafing people enough to support a repeal
    - eanzenberg 10y ago
      I think it will work and I think it will come. What I most disagree with is the timescale for the shift to occur :)
- vvanders 10y ago
  Yeah, $13k + no Medical is insanity. It's seems like the question was framed specifically to fail.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Unless it serves as a replacement for almost all handouts, it will never get the votes to pass in the US. Also, Social Security is effectively a UBI for old people. Why would you keep it around?
  - mason240 10y ago
    Unless it serves as a replacement for almost all handouts, it wouldn't even be UBI.
- anoplus 10y ago
  Agree with what you said. I also believe we need to keep UBI high in discussion to move it forward.
- abannin 10y ago
  Isn't Social Security just age restricted basic income? It seems strange to have UBI and then give citizens another check after they hit retirement age.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    The retirement part of Social Security is conditional. The amount of the benefit is determined based on working salary and there is a (fairly minimal) amount of working years that must be recorded to receive it. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10070.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10070.pdf The disability system is different (but also obviously conditional).
    - abannin 10y ago
      It looks like I don't fully understand the system. I suspect there is a need based system that supplements Social Security benefits if the recipient is below the poverty line?
  - lumberjack 10y ago
    What? No. People worked for that money. It's more like a mandated savings account or mandatory old age insurance or something like that.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > What? No. People worked for that money. It's more like a mandated savings account or mandatory old age insurance or something like that. Well, if you take an insurance model to Social Security, the only real 'risk' is the question of how long you'll live. And depending on how much you make, it's very possible to pay in more to Social Security before the age of 65 than you can expect to receive in benefits even for a reasonably long lifespan, making it a redistribution rather than a mandatory savings account. Put another way, even if you assume that Social Security will be around in 40 years[0], if you get a high-paying job straight out of college and keep getting paid at that rate (adjusted for inflation), Social Security is basically guaranteed to pay you less money than you would have if you just kept the withholdings yourself and stuck it in a regular savings account. Whether or not you think that's a good thing, it's very clearly a redistribution and not an insurance. [0] and also ignore the fact that the benefits being paid in 40 years will be based on the taxpayers 40 years from now, not the taxpayers today
- mason240 10y ago
  >UBI ought to replace things like food stamps and welfare. Not healthcare or retirement benefits! Why would you receive extra retirement payments on top of UBI? That would defeat the entire purpose of UBI.
  - malka 10y ago
    healthcare is not an extra payment though. I think it is important to have a universal healthcare even with UBI.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Yes, the most immediate thing that can be done to effect progress towards a UBI is to lower medical costs. The tricky question is whether we can do that. For instance, does new medical technology do much to lower lifetime spending?
      - ghaff 10y ago
        >does new medical technology do much to lower lifetime spending? Not in general. New technologies/medicines/etc. tend to increase healthcare costs.
    - mason240 10y ago
      I was referring the SS reference.
  - lumberjack 10y ago
    Well in that case it would be a rotten deal. Why would anyone want this crap instead of a normal pension?
    - mason240 10y ago
      We are referring to Social Security type programs, not private pensions. I'm 32 have little doubt that my private retirement accounts will be seized through taxes by the time I retire, but that's a different issue.
- cheald 10y ago
  The reason it does so is that it's the only viable way to fund it. 235,715,590 people 21+ in the US. At $13k/year that's just over $3 trillion dollars per year. Social Security spending was $888b in 2015, Medicare spending was $546b in 2015, and other welfare spending was $1.031b. If you cut all SS, Medicare, and other welfare spending and redirected it into a $13k/yr UBI, you'd still be about 20% short of your necessary funding. Total federal revenues for 2015 were about $3.25t. If you leave Medicare and SS in place? You could only fund 46% of the UBI requirement with existing welfare spending. Good luck passing the massive tax increases needed to fund that. And that's ignoring the fact that the SSA indicates that the long-term ability to meet SS obligations is already in danger.
  - drabiega 10y ago
    Every thread about UBI is full of people doing this same math. Anyone who thought that you could have UBI without taxes to zero it out for most of the population has long since been convinced. Who are you writing this for?
    - eanzenberg 10y ago
      Until it is explained how it will be funded this fact should always be brought up.
- brooklyndavs 10y ago
  Totally agree, the question was framed poorly. Most liberal economists would disagree with this because it strips the existing social safety net (Social Security and Medicare being the big ones) and replaces it with only 13k. Heck, try buying private health insurance for someone who is 70 on 13k a year. :) Most conservative economists disagree because you didn't "earn" that money (whatever that means) and it would raise taxes. I suspect it was framed in a way to generate the most amount of disagreement as possible.
thinkt4nk 10y ago
Isn't the confidence implied in the vote? i.e. isn't "Strongly disagree" really just a vote for "disagree" with great confidence?
- dllthomas 10y ago
  "Uncertain, confidence 10"
rubidium 10y ago
I don't know a better way to put this. The whole UBI idea that shows up here a lot (e.g. https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit-possibility/ https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit-possibility/) is just naive. And now we have a nice poll of the experts to justify that judgement. UBI of $13k has the same support from experts as does denying climate change.
- dllthomas 10y ago
  "A UBI of $13k financed by removing X, Y, Z programs [such that the numbers don't even actually add up]" Counting that as a dismissal of all UBI proposals seems incorrect.
- apalmer 10y ago
  UBI, is one of those things I just cannot logically compute. I am completely in support of the end goals of UBI. Just cannot fathom how UBI can even theoretically works. It seems to ignore Economics, Game Theory, and Human Nature. I just dont understand how it could rationally be viewed as a workable solution.
  - rjprins 10y ago
    Imagine you are part of tribe, would you share food, care, and help in general with your fellow tribesmen and women? Now imagine the tribe is really big and named the USA. Human nature is both social and competitive. UBI is a social gesture, it doesn't take away or prevent competitiveness.
  - sutterbomb 10y ago
    Can you share details on what specifically isn't computing?
    - runin2k1 10y ago
      I'm no "apalmer", but have a similar perspective... From a simple supply and demand standpoint, how does the extra income introduced not simply cause the cost of basic* goods to rise accordingly such that you end up with your UBI increasingly falling behind what is needed to support a minimum standard of living? * Added "basic" for clarity, I don't imagine this would affect the cost of luxury, or recreational goods to a large extent, but an extra $1000+/month per person would, I expect, have a drastic effect on housing rental rates amidst the lower to middle class residential areas
IanCal 10y ago
> Work = being part of society That's a sad state of affairs.
- jlas 10y ago
  Well, you can be rich
- jcizzle 10y ago
  Society is a group of people whose collaborative efforts are able to accomplish more than any one individual and more than simply a sum of individuals. That means 'work', which is another word for 'doing something for someone else'. It is selfish to believe that one can belong to a group of people and obtain the benefits without contributing to it.
  - vkou 10y ago
    A lot of work does little to benefit society. It is a collaborative effort to enrich your employer.
    - jcizzle 10y ago
      That is a viewpoint that ignores the level at which humans, especially in the US, live at. The amount of work and people that goes into having convenient access to food, transportation and clean water is incredible. And those are just basic needs that we take for granted. Your employer creates good and services that people consume, therefore, the work enriches society. If your short-sightedness only extends to the point where you are evaluating who is making the bigger paycheck, I'd say that is a shortcoming of your self-awareness, not of society.
      - PCMcGee 10y ago
        The level most people in the US live at is called "poverty". The amount of work that goes into food, transportation and clean water is incredibly small, compared to the amount of people it supports, and it could be made immensely more efficient if we weren't using technology that is 100 years old. The only thing a market creates is blind demand for more useless crap, while destroying the very firmament on which it operates. This libertarian "belief" in the benefits of markets is utterly contradicted by scientific evidence which shows that capitalism is the force that is destroying our environment, while extenuating the inequality between the rent-seeking and the rent-paying. I'm sure your dad taught you to "work hard", but we don't live in the forest anymore. It's time for you to educate yourself about what would be beneficial for society as a whole, rather than believing in adages that (shockingly) uphold and entrench the advantages you have inherited from your birthplace and skin color.
lossolo 10y ago
I think you need to look at it from bigger picture. It's only matter of time when machines will take most of non creative jobs (we all see how ML is going forward) because they will be cheaper and more efficient than humans. Tell me then what you will do with hundreds of millions of people without work? In my opinion basic income is the answer to this problem.
aresant 10y ago
"It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society " - Markus Brunnermeier(1) I love how simply Markus arrived at the fundamental political issue with Basic Income in the USA: American culture and society is a "work culture". If you're not working you're not part of society. That's a very plain and powerful statement that is central to many of the gut-reaction trump-esque disparaging arguments vs. UBI. (1) http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/participant-bio-2?id=45 http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/partici...
- btilly 10y ago
  It is a simplistic but very ironic claim. One of the main problems with the existing social net is that it comes with "economic cliffs" where making a little more is not to your economic advantage. And then people who make the rational decision are seen as "lazy". For a real example, my niece had to turn down a job because it paid her $0.20 too much to stay on food stamps. And she couldn't be paid less because it would have broken union rules. So she did the rational thing and turned down the better job. Which meant that her skills and education went underutilized. One of the big arguments for UBI is that this kind of thing doesn't happen.
  - jcizzle 10y ago
    Would the better job been the first in a series of steps to even better jobs/promotions in the future? Did that job have the same pay from now until retirement? Would a year of hard work in this job yield a raise that offset the loss to food stamps? If any of these are true, her's wasn't the rational decision, it was the most convenient, least risky decision.
    - ___eponymous___ 10y ago
      You're talking about the "rational decision" as if there's only one value to optimize. If their "utility function" is described by more than just how much money they have/make, then it could be perfectly rational to turn down the job. That being said I do agree that if there's a huge difference in future earning power, it would still generally worth it to go for the job that involves giving up food stamps.
smokeyj 10y ago
Why are economists being polled? Is it because economics is such a dismal science it requires populism to claim the moral high ground? Does this mean I can officially be smug to those pesky UBI supporters?
33a 10y ago
Not surprising there are so many negative responses, the question was poorly worded. No way that you can kill medicare and replace it with a $13k yearly income.
- _rpd 10y ago
  > > This is a dumb question. We are not going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare etc. > -- Richard Thaler Yes, you're not alone in that thought.
roymurdock 10y ago
Cristopher Udry, Yale: The simplicity is attractive, but deceptive. Coupled with universal health care & tax reform it could work. but we are far from that. The key is tax reform. UBI is just an interesting and controversial new name for a more boring (and conventional) idea: wealth redistribution through tax reform. Nobody wants to talk about tax reform because it's boring, opaque, and gridlocked at a political level, whereas anyone can have an opinion on the new hot topic of UBI. Hopefully UBI will bring about a fruitful discussion of more fundamental issues, such as tax reform, in the near future.
abannin 10y ago
The data is misleading; many of comments reject the context of the question not UBI itself. Take Thaler's response: "This is a dumb question. We are not going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare etc." The survey is not an expert review of UBI, but rather a specific implementation of UBI.
brooklyndavs 10y ago
"Raising taxes is costly and so redistribution should be targeted to those who need help most." - Oliver Hart So what if most people are out of a job in 50 years due to automation? What if "targeted to those who need help most" is 90% of all adults. Yeah raising taxes is costly, but considering owners of capital will most likely see most of the benefits from productivity gains in the future I'm sure they can afford it. More from Mr Hart "Bill Gates would get 13K, which is crazy." Um yeah, Bill Gates also will get social security and medicare (and he should). That's the whole point of a benefit. I wonder if Mr Hart is an advocate for means testings of these programs? How lovely is it that "experts" like this have the ears of our policy makers.
exit 10y ago
perhaps the "infulstructure" for ubi should already be rolled out. some bank account tied to identity, receiving a nominal amount monthly..
gabemart 10y ago
How could you get rid of Medicare and Medicaid just by giving everyone $13k per year? What happens when someone with no other income needs life-saving medical treatment that costs more than $13k?
sharemywin 10y ago
The problem is the math don't add up. To give 13k per adult(242M) you need 3.2T. The total us Budget in 2015 was 3.8T so you need to increase taxes by 81%. If you subtract out all the welfare benefits you(615B(16%)) you still need to raise taxes buy 65%.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sharemywin 10y ago
  or at 4.8T in US retail sales you could have a 80% retail sales tax.
- eanzenberg 10y ago
  This should literally always be the top comment until it's explained how to handle the tremendous cost.
  - PCMcGee 10y ago
    Stop paying retail prices for everything. In a market based economy, we need everyone shopping, every week. But, in a resource based economy, we would build things to last longer, and design things that are more efficient. The cost is not the issue, it is the design of the product that is so wasteful. We need waste in this system, it is profitable. I'm sure you"ll ignore me as some quack. Too bad (for you and me), because this is the main problem with our society. Try reading the book "The Best That Money Can't Buy", if you don't understand what I am talking about.
russelluresti 10y ago
Scrolling through the participants list, I'm so glad they asked black people and other minorities their opinion on the matter (if you're not familiar with sarcasm, let me rephrase - this is a long list of nearly 100% white people).
PCMcGee 10y ago
I don't begin to pretend to understand the delusions that people are citing as reasons for supporting a "work" culture. Are the people who believe this rhetoric blind to the destruction that is being caused to the Earth by billions of people needing to "make money to live"? Poachers do not poach because they are too stupid to understand the value of the life they are taking. They are poaching because that's the only way to provide the resources their family needs to survive. The same is true with every type of destructive behavior humanity is practicing in response to economic pressures. Children in mines and sweatshops, farmers burning down rainforests, or fishermen exhausting the endless ocean's bounty. People need access to basic resources in order to survive and prosper. They need food, water, shelter, healthcare and education. Our monetary economic system CANNOT provide this to everyone, it is built on the scarcity of money, and it distributes this scarcity efficiently through the demand/market system. Until society steps up to the plate and implements a system where these needs are met, we are effectively living in middle age serfdom! "Civilization" is a society where we recognize the needs of that society, and implement systems to meet those needs. What we have today is a free-market slavery system. You are enslaved to the bank that issues your currency against the "work" you will provide in the future. Your National ID number is your bond number, and your countries credit-worthiness is dependant on your productivity, en masse. Your money is a debt note, owed to those banks, issued to you by your financial reserve system. Most of the beneficial work performed by the participants of society goes unpaid. Parenting, teaching, volunteering, caring about and helping your friends and neighbors, not vandalizing public spaces, reporting crimes, speaking out about abuses of power and educating your family and friends about social issues. These things are the best things we do, and they are priceless. The jobs you get paid to do, are because no one would do them unless they needed the money to survive. Maybe they are the things that didn't need doing in the first place. I want to suggest that people who believe in this imaginary money system remove their head from their anus and find out what a resource-based economic system looks like, and why it is superior to any type of system that could ever be built through coercion.

42 points by cjlars 10y ago

The formulation of the question frames Social Security and Medicare as being mutually exclusive with a UBI. UBI ought to replace things like food stamps and welfare. Not healthcare or retirement benefits! I am a huge fan of UBI, and I would have voted "disagree" the way that question was framed. A better formulation would be to frame UBI as an "automation dividend". Where we dip into increased efficiencies produced by automating labor to fund a basic income.

eanzenberg 10y ago
How do you reconcile the massive increase in spending this would cause?
- Retric 10y ago
  A flater tax rate would make up a large chunk of the difference. Basicly, at 50k you still get UBI, but it's offset by new taxes to leave your after tax income more or less the same. At 25k, you pay a lot more in taxes, but get a UBI for a net gain. At 0k you just get UBI, not food stamps ect. There would probably be a net cost increase, but as SS counts as regular income it's not going to be huge for most retires. At some UBI levels it's actually less than our current system. Programs to be removed, food stamps, HUD, welfare, unemployment insurance, Medical disability part of SS, and all the overhead associated with them. PS: The economic gain from social mobility would likely be huge as long as you don't adjust UBI for locations. Why be poor in NY when you can live well in a cheap part of Florida.
  - wang_li 10y ago
    I thought the U stood for universal. If you take it back in new taxes, it's just a transfer program from productive to non-productive.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      It often stands for unconditional.
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      It's a transfer from productive to non-productive under all possible setups. How were you imagining it would be funded?
    - deathanatos 10y ago
      But I have to echo eanzenberg's comment, > How do you reconcile the massive increase in spending this would cause? If you're giving each person $13k/yr, does that not imply that you must then collect $13k/yr/person in taxes? Unless you're thinking it is all going to come from corporate taxes, then at least some of it must come from a citizen's taxes, no? (and if you do think this should come from corporations, do you not think that would have an effect on what gets passed to an employee? Why not pay a person $13k/yr less? — or more, since some people won't/can't work and we must cover them too?) I have no idea if UBI is a good idea or not … but if people want to do it, I expect to know how it will be paid for.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        You can just print the money or otherwise conjure it into existence. For instance, by telling banks to change numbers in their databases. It probably isn't a good idea, but it's possible.
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        That's still a transfer from productive people to unproductive people. It just takes the specific form of hyperinflation. There is no difference between taxing everyone 20% of their holdings, and printing yourself 25% of everyone else's holdings. Either way you end up with a fifth of the wealth, and everyone's purchasing power goes down so yours can go up.
        10y ago
  - cheald 10y ago
    You're effectively describing a negative income tax, not UBI.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      There's a whole miasma of overlapping ideas. Lots of people propose a negative income tax as a way to implement a UBI.
    - Retric 10y ago
      I am not sure there is a difference as UBI's must be funded. At least in the US, oil states for example have a somewhat independent income stream.
- 1024core 10y ago
  I keep asking the same question; and all I get, basically, is that the money will just appear from somewhere. What will happen to all the non-profits and government departments that are built around providing "services" to the poor, homeless, etc.? It's a huge industry, and it's not going down without a fight. In the meantime, you have added a few trillion dollars in annual spending to the budget.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > It's a huge industry, and it's not going down without a fight. It's not just that it's 'not going down without a fight' - these services are essential for people in need. These services provide them with more than just financial assistance. Given them money (and doing away with the services) only solves the problem if you assume that lack of money is the only problem. Which it's not - it's one aspect of the problem, but not the only issue for people in need.
  - malka 10y ago
    UBI may not totally clear the homeless problem. Many of them are insane person without any care.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Depends on the costs. If automation can push down food costs to minuscule levels (like a solar powered, robot-run, indoor greenhouse), you won't need to take as much in taxes. Granted, housing is often much more expensive relative to income - especially to the poor and working class - but that doesn't mean there can't be mass-produced, high density housing units. UBI really could work, but right now I don't think the costs of completely sustaining societies are low enough to keep the tax increases from chafing people enough to support a repeal
  - eanzenberg 10y ago
    I think it will work and I think it will come. What I most disagree with is the timescale for the shift to occur :)
vvanders 10y ago
Yeah, $13k + no Medical is insanity. It's seems like the question was framed specifically to fail.
marcoperaza 10y ago
Unless it serves as a replacement for almost all handouts, it will never get the votes to pass in the US. Also, Social Security is effectively a UBI for old people. Why would you keep it around?
- mason240 10y ago
  Unless it serves as a replacement for almost all handouts, it wouldn't even be UBI.
anoplus 10y ago
Agree with what you said. I also believe we need to keep UBI high in discussion to move it forward.
abannin 10y ago
Isn't Social Security just age restricted basic income? It seems strange to have UBI and then give citizens another check after they hit retirement age.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The retirement part of Social Security is conditional. The amount of the benefit is determined based on working salary and there is a (fairly minimal) amount of working years that must be recorded to receive it. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10070.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10070.pdf The disability system is different (but also obviously conditional).
  - abannin 10y ago
    It looks like I don't fully understand the system. I suspect there is a need based system that supplements Social Security benefits if the recipient is below the poverty line?
- lumberjack 10y ago
  What? No. People worked for that money. It's more like a mandated savings account or mandatory old age insurance or something like that.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > What? No. People worked for that money. It's more like a mandated savings account or mandatory old age insurance or something like that. Well, if you take an insurance model to Social Security, the only real 'risk' is the question of how long you'll live. And depending on how much you make, it's very possible to pay in more to Social Security before the age of 65 than you can expect to receive in benefits even for a reasonably long lifespan, making it a redistribution rather than a mandatory savings account. Put another way, even if you assume that Social Security will be around in 40 years[0], if you get a high-paying job straight out of college and keep getting paid at that rate (adjusted for inflation), Social Security is basically guaranteed to pay you less money than you would have if you just kept the withholdings yourself and stuck it in a regular savings account. Whether or not you think that's a good thing, it's very clearly a redistribution and not an insurance. [0] and also ignore the fact that the benefits being paid in 40 years will be based on the taxpayers 40 years from now, not the taxpayers today
mason240 10y ago
>UBI ought to replace things like food stamps and welfare. Not healthcare or retirement benefits! Why would you receive extra retirement payments on top of UBI? That would defeat the entire purpose of UBI.
- malka 10y ago
  healthcare is not an extra payment though. I think it is important to have a universal healthcare even with UBI.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Yes, the most immediate thing that can be done to effect progress towards a UBI is to lower medical costs. The tricky question is whether we can do that. For instance, does new medical technology do much to lower lifetime spending?
    - ghaff 10y ago
      >does new medical technology do much to lower lifetime spending? Not in general. New technologies/medicines/etc. tend to increase healthcare costs.
  - mason240 10y ago
    I was referring the SS reference.
- lumberjack 10y ago
  Well in that case it would be a rotten deal. Why would anyone want this crap instead of a normal pension?
  - mason240 10y ago
    We are referring to Social Security type programs, not private pensions. I'm 32 have little doubt that my private retirement accounts will be seized through taxes by the time I retire, but that's a different issue.
cheald 10y ago
The reason it does so is that it's the only viable way to fund it. 235,715,590 people 21+ in the US. At $13k/year that's just over $3 trillion dollars per year. Social Security spending was $888b in 2015, Medicare spending was $546b in 2015, and other welfare spending was $1.031b. If you cut all SS, Medicare, and other welfare spending and redirected it into a $13k/yr UBI, you'd still be about 20% short of your necessary funding. Total federal revenues for 2015 were about $3.25t. If you leave Medicare and SS in place? You could only fund 46% of the UBI requirement with existing welfare spending. Good luck passing the massive tax increases needed to fund that. And that's ignoring the fact that the SSA indicates that the long-term ability to meet SS obligations is already in danger.
- drabiega 10y ago
  Every thread about UBI is full of people doing this same math. Anyone who thought that you could have UBI without taxes to zero it out for most of the population has long since been convinced. Who are you writing this for?
  - eanzenberg 10y ago
    Until it is explained how it will be funded this fact should always be brought up.
brooklyndavs 10y ago
Totally agree, the question was framed poorly. Most liberal economists would disagree with this because it strips the existing social safety net (Social Security and Medicare being the big ones) and replaces it with only 13k. Heck, try buying private health insurance for someone who is 70 on 13k a year. :) Most conservative economists disagree because you didn't "earn" that money (whatever that means) and it would raise taxes. I suspect it was framed in a way to generate the most amount of disagreement as possible.

thinkt4nk 10y ago

Isn't the confidence implied in the vote? i.e. isn't "Strongly disagree" really just a vote for "disagree" with great confidence?

dllthomas 10y ago
"Uncertain, confidence 10"

rubidium 10y ago

I don't know a better way to put this. The whole UBI idea that shows up here a lot (e.g. https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit-possibility/ https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit-possibility/) is just naive. And now we have a nice poll of the experts to justify that judgement. UBI of $13k has the same support from experts as does denying climate change.

dllthomas 10y ago
"A UBI of $13k financed by removing X, Y, Z programs [such that the numbers don't even actually add up]" Counting that as a dismissal of all UBI proposals seems incorrect.
apalmer 10y ago
UBI, is one of those things I just cannot logically compute. I am completely in support of the end goals of UBI. Just cannot fathom how UBI can even theoretically works. It seems to ignore Economics, Game Theory, and Human Nature. I just dont understand how it could rationally be viewed as a workable solution.
- rjprins 10y ago
  Imagine you are part of tribe, would you share food, care, and help in general with your fellow tribesmen and women? Now imagine the tribe is really big and named the USA. Human nature is both social and competitive. UBI is a social gesture, it doesn't take away or prevent competitiveness.
- sutterbomb 10y ago
  Can you share details on what specifically isn't computing?
  - runin2k1 10y ago
    I'm no "apalmer", but have a similar perspective... From a simple supply and demand standpoint, how does the extra income introduced not simply cause the cost of basic* goods to rise accordingly such that you end up with your UBI increasingly falling behind what is needed to support a minimum standard of living? * Added "basic" for clarity, I don't imagine this would affect the cost of luxury, or recreational goods to a large extent, but an extra $1000+/month per person would, I expect, have a drastic effect on housing rental rates amidst the lower to middle class residential areas

IanCal 10y ago

> Work = being part of society That's a sad state of affairs.

jlas 10y ago
Well, you can be rich
jcizzle 10y ago
Society is a group of people whose collaborative efforts are able to accomplish more than any one individual and more than simply a sum of individuals. That means 'work', which is another word for 'doing something for someone else'. It is selfish to believe that one can belong to a group of people and obtain the benefits without contributing to it.
- vkou 10y ago
  A lot of work does little to benefit society. It is a collaborative effort to enrich your employer.
  - jcizzle 10y ago
    That is a viewpoint that ignores the level at which humans, especially in the US, live at. The amount of work and people that goes into having convenient access to food, transportation and clean water is incredible. And those are just basic needs that we take for granted. Your employer creates good and services that people consume, therefore, the work enriches society. If your short-sightedness only extends to the point where you are evaluating who is making the bigger paycheck, I'd say that is a shortcoming of your self-awareness, not of society.
    - PCMcGee 10y ago
      The level most people in the US live at is called "poverty". The amount of work that goes into food, transportation and clean water is incredibly small, compared to the amount of people it supports, and it could be made immensely more efficient if we weren't using technology that is 100 years old. The only thing a market creates is blind demand for more useless crap, while destroying the very firmament on which it operates. This libertarian "belief" in the benefits of markets is utterly contradicted by scientific evidence which shows that capitalism is the force that is destroying our environment, while extenuating the inequality between the rent-seeking and the rent-paying. I'm sure your dad taught you to "work hard", but we don't live in the forest anymore. It's time for you to educate yourself about what would be beneficial for society as a whole, rather than believing in adages that (shockingly) uphold and entrench the advantages you have inherited from your birthplace and skin color.

lossolo 10y ago

I think you need to look at it from bigger picture. It's only matter of time when machines will take most of non creative jobs (we all see how ML is going forward) because they will be cheaper and more efficient than humans. Tell me then what you will do with hundreds of millions of people without work? In my opinion basic income is the answer to this problem.

aresant 10y ago

"It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society " - Markus Brunnermeier(1) I love how simply Markus arrived at the fundamental political issue with Basic Income in the USA: American culture and society is a "work culture". If you're not working you're not part of society. That's a very plain and powerful statement that is central to many of the gut-reaction trump-esque disparaging arguments vs. UBI. (1) http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/participant-bio-2?id=45 http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/partici...

btilly 10y ago
It is a simplistic but very ironic claim. One of the main problems with the existing social net is that it comes with "economic cliffs" where making a little more is not to your economic advantage. And then people who make the rational decision are seen as "lazy". For a real example, my niece had to turn down a job because it paid her $0.20 too much to stay on food stamps. And she couldn't be paid less because it would have broken union rules. So she did the rational thing and turned down the better job. Which meant that her skills and education went underutilized. One of the big arguments for UBI is that this kind of thing doesn't happen.
- jcizzle 10y ago
  Would the better job been the first in a series of steps to even better jobs/promotions in the future? Did that job have the same pay from now until retirement? Would a year of hard work in this job yield a raise that offset the loss to food stamps? If any of these are true, her's wasn't the rational decision, it was the most convenient, least risky decision.
  - ___eponymous___ 10y ago
    You're talking about the "rational decision" as if there's only one value to optimize. If their "utility function" is described by more than just how much money they have/make, then it could be perfectly rational to turn down the job. That being said I do agree that if there's a huge difference in future earning power, it would still generally worth it to go for the job that involves giving up food stamps.

smokeyj 10y ago

Why are economists being polled? Is it because economics is such a dismal science it requires populism to claim the moral high ground? Does this mean I can officially be smug to those pesky UBI supporters?

33a 10y ago

Not surprising there are so many negative responses, the question was poorly worded. No way that you can kill medicare and replace it with a $13k yearly income.

_rpd 10y ago
> > This is a dumb question. We are not going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare etc. > -- Richard Thaler Yes, you're not alone in that thought.

roymurdock 10y ago

Cristopher Udry, Yale: The simplicity is attractive, but deceptive. Coupled with universal health care & tax reform it could work. but we are far from that. The key is tax reform. UBI is just an interesting and controversial new name for a more boring (and conventional) idea: wealth redistribution through tax reform. Nobody wants to talk about tax reform because it's boring, opaque, and gridlocked at a political level, whereas anyone can have an opinion on the new hot topic of UBI. Hopefully UBI will bring about a fruitful discussion of more fundamental issues, such as tax reform, in the near future.

abannin 10y ago

The data is misleading; many of comments reject the context of the question not UBI itself. Take Thaler's response: "This is a dumb question. We are not going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare etc." The survey is not an expert review of UBI, but rather a specific implementation of UBI.

brooklyndavs 10y ago

"Raising taxes is costly and so redistribution should be targeted to those who need help most." - Oliver Hart So what if most people are out of a job in 50 years due to automation? What if "targeted to those who need help most" is 90% of all adults. Yeah raising taxes is costly, but considering owners of capital will most likely see most of the benefits from productivity gains in the future I'm sure they can afford it. More from Mr Hart "Bill Gates would get 13K, which is crazy." Um yeah, Bill Gates also will get social security and medicare (and he should). That's the whole point of a benefit. I wonder if Mr Hart is an advocate for means testings of these programs? How lovely is it that "experts" like this have the ears of our policy makers.

exit 10y ago

perhaps the "infulstructure" for ubi should already be rolled out. some bank account tied to identity, receiving a nominal amount monthly..

gabemart 10y ago

How could you get rid of Medicare and Medicaid just by giving everyone $13k per year? What happens when someone with no other income needs life-saving medical treatment that costs more than $13k?

sharemywin 10y ago

The problem is the math don't add up. To give 13k per adult(242M) you need 3.2T. The total us Budget in 2015 was 3.8T so you need to increase taxes by 81%. If you subtract out all the welfare benefits you(615B(16%)) you still need to raise taxes buy 65%.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sharemywin 10y ago
or at 4.8T in US retail sales you could have a 80% retail sales tax.
eanzenberg 10y ago
This should literally always be the top comment until it's explained how to handle the tremendous cost.
- PCMcGee 10y ago
  Stop paying retail prices for everything. In a market based economy, we need everyone shopping, every week. But, in a resource based economy, we would build things to last longer, and design things that are more efficient. The cost is not the issue, it is the design of the product that is so wasteful. We need waste in this system, it is profitable. I'm sure you"ll ignore me as some quack. Too bad (for you and me), because this is the main problem with our society. Try reading the book "The Best That Money Can't Buy", if you don't understand what I am talking about.

russelluresti 10y ago

Scrolling through the participants list, I'm so glad they asked black people and other minorities their opinion on the matter (if you're not familiar with sarcasm, let me rephrase - this is a long list of nearly 100% white people).

PCMcGee 10y ago

I don't begin to pretend to understand the delusions that people are citing as reasons for supporting a "work" culture. Are the people who believe this rhetoric blind to the destruction that is being caused to the Earth by billions of people needing to "make money to live"? Poachers do not poach because they are too stupid to understand the value of the life they are taking. They are poaching because that's the only way to provide the resources their family needs to survive. The same is true with every type of destructive behavior humanity is practicing in response to economic pressures. Children in mines and sweatshops, farmers burning down rainforests, or fishermen exhausting the endless ocean's bounty. People need access to basic resources in order to survive and prosper. They need food, water, shelter, healthcare and education. Our monetary economic system CANNOT provide this to everyone, it is built on the scarcity of money, and it distributes this scarcity efficiently through the demand/market system. Until society steps up to the plate and implements a system where these needs are met, we are effectively living in middle age serfdom! "Civilization" is a society where we recognize the needs of that society, and implement systems to meet those needs. What we have today is a free-market slavery system. You are enslaved to the bank that issues your currency against the "work" you will provide in the future. Your National ID number is your bond number, and your countries credit-worthiness is dependant on your productivity, en masse. Your money is a debt note, owed to those banks, issued to you by your financial reserve system. Most of the beneficial work performed by the participants of society goes unpaid. Parenting, teaching, volunteering, caring about and helping your friends and neighbors, not vandalizing public spaces, reporting crimes, speaking out about abuses of power and educating your family and friends about social issues. These things are the best things we do, and they are priceless. The jobs you get paid to do, are because no one would do them unless they needed the money to survive. Maybe they are the things that didn't need doing in the first place. I want to suggest that people who believe in this imaginary money system remove their head from their anus and find out what a resource-based economic system looks like, and why it is superior to any type of system that could ever be built through coercion.