4 ms·

I upvoted you because you're right with regards to UBI as it's argued for in places like this forum. The same arguments were true the first time these ideas wer

by krrrh 10y ago

I upvoted you because you're right with regards to UBI as it's argued for in places like this forum. The same arguments were true the first time these ideas were proposed when it was called Social Credit. However, I suspect that replacing patchwork welfare and social programs with a simplified negative income tax[1] or expansion of the earned income tax credit is a plausible path that could lead towards something like a UBI. This would be welfare-level support, not provide a 'living wage', and not pay out money to anyone who was earning above a basic threshold (at which point they would be paying a positive income tax, just like today). Once something like this is in place I could see the needle being moved over time if the sort of automation that machines give us in the coming decades really is categorically different from the sort of automation that machines have given us in the past 2 centuries (debatable). [1] http://www.economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/11/milton_friedman_1.html http://www.economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/11...

atemerev 10y ago
I despise bureaucracy as much as the next person, but replacing welfare programs with negative income tax will not work. There are just too many people and too little money. Welfare programs are specific and target select audience; targeting broad audience will just spread the money to wafer-thin levels. Concerning the automation and sudden increases in productivity — but this was exactly the very same promise that full-scale Communism was expected to deliver in Soviet Union. It was reiterated in internal propaganda endlessly (I still remember that). As every ex-Soviet person knows well, the full-scale Communism (with free basic income, fully automated factories and cities of the future) was promised as early as 1980. Now it is called "post-scarcity". It wasn't delivered then, and I doubt it will be delivered this century.

by krrrh 10y ago

atemerev 10y ago

I despise bureaucracy as much as the next person, but replacing welfare programs with negative income tax will not work. There are just too many people and too little money. Welfare programs are specific and target select audience; targeting broad audience will just spread the money to wafer-thin levels. Concerning the automation and sudden increases in productivity — but this was exactly the very same promise that full-scale Communism was expected to deliver in Soviet Union. It was reiterated in internal propaganda endlessly (I still remember that). As every ex-Soviet person knows well, the full-scale Communism (with free basic income, fully automated factories and cities of the future) was promised as early as 1980. Now it is called "post-scarcity". It wasn't delivered then, and I doubt it will be delivered this century.