8 ms·

Universal Basic Income Is a Neoliberal Plot to Make You Poorer

37 points by kawera 10y ago

ddexter289 10y ago
Misleading title. The author makes the argument that UBI would trade off with other vital social services and that's bad. It's fine to point this out as a risk of UBI adoption, but it certainly isn't an argument for why UBI is inherently bad. Plenty of people would be happy to see UBI co-existing with long standing social benefits.
- thescribe 10y ago
  I guess I do not see the point of UBI, if not the total elimination of other social programs.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    A major point of UBI is to eliminate (or reduce) adverse incentives inherent in means-tested social benefit programs; it can easily do this while replacing only some existing means-tested social benefit programs, leaving other social benefit programs (means tested and otherwise) in place.
basicplus2 10y ago
articles stating Universal Basic income is a Neolibral plot to make you poorer is a neolibral plot to make you vote against Universal Income to make you poorer
skrowl 10y ago
All welfare (direct payment from a government to an individual) systems are designed to make you poorer and more controllable. Universal basic income is no different in this regard.
- altcognito 10y ago
  It's strange that corporations spend so much time and effort lobbying for tax breaks, grants and credits, what with them making them so poor and controllable.
- ahoy 10y ago
  An odd assertion - "having more money makes you poorer".
  - socialist_coder 10y ago
    Well, the argument in the article is that basic necessities are priced based on what people can afford. So, if everyone is getting UBI, in theory they could all afford more, and so prices would just go up; bringing everyone back to where they used to be before UBI, but now without the non-UBI based benefits (food stamps, welfare, etc). But, the article does not provide any evidence (simulations or studies) to back up that claim and, in my opinion, it is not very convincing.
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      In regions where housing supply is constrained it seems very likely those costs would increase in line with any increase in incomes from UBI. This makes me think the state getting involved in housing provision would have a much greater impact than UBI.
    - tricknik 10y ago
      Yes, it does provide evidence, by citing Minksy: http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/ http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/
  - sebastianconcpt 10y ago
    Fiat currency is printed by taxing you via inflation. So, yeah, receiving fake money makes you poorer. And if you think it works, ask a venezuelan how that plan is working or not.
mason240 10y ago
I was wondering how long it would be before UBI started to be attacked by the far left, considering it will cement capitalism the basis for the economy and make all forms of socialism obsolete.
- ahoy 10y ago
  That doesn't seem to be the issue that this article raises. >a closer look at how UBI is expected to work reveals that it is intended to provide political cover for the elimination of social programs and the privatization of social services. Seems like the issue is that UBI, as it's being discussed now, will look more like "entitlement reform" than a net benefit for poor people.
  - mason240 10y ago
    > intended to provide political cover for the elimination of social programs Yeah, because that's the whole point of UBI. It removes all the middlemen, all the politicians/ideologues using those programs to buy votes, the welfare cliffs, and replaces it with something that just helps people. Like with any change though, the ones who benifit from the current system (and I'm not referring to the actual beneficiaries) are going to be opposed to it. It's really going to to come down to whether you care more about implementing your ideology or actually helping poor people (and everyone else).
- Kenji 10y ago
  UBI is quite literally the opposite of capitalism. It is a form of socialism, so saying it makes 'all forms of socialism obsolete' is a very strange thing to say.
  - nanny 10y ago
    >UBI is quite literally the opposite of capitalism. It is a form of socialism How would UBI transfer the means of production from capitalists to the workers? Don't confuse socialism with a welfare state.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
Wow, that's a strong claim backed up by... absolutely nothing of merit.
- socialist_coder 10y ago
  That was my take away too. There are no mentions of studies or simulations to back up the primary claim that inflation would eat away any UBI based benefits.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    I was waiting for something too, even something flimsy. I guess the takeaway is that until this is studied and probably put into practice in pilot programs like HN's and others', we're just going to be subjected to load of ideological rhetoric.
  - tricknik 10y ago
    Do you mean no studies other than the citation to Minsky who extensively shows just that? Here is the original paper: http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/ http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/
- sebastianconcpt 10y ago
  Uses the word "neoliberal" you know that is cultural marxist propaganda. Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8pPbrbJJQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8pPbrbJJQs
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    "Cultural Marxist"... irony?
    - sebastianconcpt 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Gramscianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Gramscianism
jackmott 10y ago
It isn't as if it is a secret that at the root, the goal of ideas like these is to reduce income disparity. But if the HackerNews Libertarian Army would prefer to live in a gated communities which keep the uneducated hungry masses away from their Montessori Schools and Gelato serveries, and fly by private helicopter over the wrecked and broken infrastructure to their friends in other gated communities so that they can 'keep all of their hard earned money', then so be it.
- lucozade 10y ago
  > the goal of ideas like these is to reduce income disparity Except when they're not. That's the point of this article. UBI is one of those ideas that can be all things to all people depending on the details. For example, say you set it at a level that could sustain an able-bodied person temporarily but needed supplementing for comfort. Say you then remove all other state funded payments. That's UBI. For example, say you set it at a level meant that most people could comfortably live off it and was topped up where necessary e.g. disability payments. That's UBI. Of these, the first is, arguably, purer UBI. It'll also do very little to reduce income disparity.
  - tfnw 10y ago
    I don't actually see income disparity as the largest problem, within limits it doesn't seem too harmful. What I see as a more important goal is too enable people to choose do things based on what they find interesting/challenging instead of what gets them paid. I would see UBI as beneficial if, in practice, it at least pushes the balance in this direction a little, even if it doesn't reduce income disparity.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I'm having real trouble working out why you're posting this here. The article has nothing to do with the dystopia you're describing; an actual read-through reveals that it's concerned about UBI worsening inequality compared to the existing benefits system. It's explicitly a piece about how to reduce disparty, and whether UBI is a bad way to do so. (I note that it's currently near the top of HN, which is awkward for that "libertarian poverty-lover" narrative.) And Furtherfield is essentially an art collective with no ties to HN, so it's not that they're part of the Libertarian Army. Am I missing something here? Because I see a writer disputing whether UBI is a good way to achieve your goal, and you replying with "see? they hate my goals!"
thelamest 10y ago
> Rather than alleviating poverty, UBI will most likely exacerbate it. The core reasoning is quite simple: the prices that people pay for housing and other necessities are derived from how much they can afford to pay in the first place. Obviously, higher demand means higher prices - but people's need for "necessities" (basic food, shelter) is constant! In that case, it shouldn't rise under UBI. My intuition is that prices would only rise for more limited, optional, luxurious goods, and that's a very good thing.
- dilemma 10y ago
  While demand for shelter remains constant, the supply of money increases, pushing prices higher.
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    If demand for shelter doesn't change, and supply for shelter doesn't change, what's pushing the price higher? Supply of money only affects prices when it can change demand or supply.
    - jerf 10y ago
      Think auction rather than static supply/demand curves. If we both used to have $500/month for shelter, and our bids settle into some stable relationship based on personal preferences, if UBI comes in and now we both have $1000/month for shelter, we can now outbid someone else who stubbornly insists that UBI shouldn't change the price. The stubborn person can either drop their stubborness and bid higher, or see themselves outbid and be forced to take something they prefer less now. The stable outcome is that the money goes to the landowners in this incredibly limited and isolated model, which I am using only to illustrate the point in a simple way. In a less simple way, there are many people, including me, who rather believe that making it easy to get money for college is the root cause of colleges getting more expensive. Having been back to my own alma mater about a year ago and seeing the unbelievably glorious meal hall they have now, which is more accurately described as a meal mall, it is abundantly clear that they have more money than they know what to do with and are spending wildly on things that have little to do with education. They're caught in their own trap; since the money is free to the students (at least for now), the university is forced to compete to be ever nicer themselves. Nobody has the power to decide to just go to a cheaper university because they'll get outcompeted by people anomalously flush with "free money". So college prices spiral ever upwards and the market mechanisms can't do much about it, because we broke the market by giving everybody "free" money, or more accurately, money whose costs were deferred beyond most people's ability to think about the future. One of the reasons I stand against UBI is that the same thing will happen. The UBI will come out, but time doesn't freeze. The UBI will then affect the economy, and people won't quite get what they wanted out it as capital owners figure out how to extract the extra funds. And the politicians will be falling over themselves to be the ones who get the credit for raising it; who would ever be re-elected who lowers the UBI? UBI takes a "free benefit" death spiral we're arguably already on and throws it into high gear, and I can't see how we'd ever escape from it short of outright collapse. Nobody will ever vote against the free money. It creates a society where the short-term incentives are always in favor of more free money, even as the long-term looms ever more obviously in everybody's face, which would actually just make the short term "get what I can while the getting's good" problem even worse. It's a catastrophically broken way to set up incentives in a society.
fromthemorning 10y ago
Neoliberals want to make you poorer, now? Say it won't work, fine, but don't say it's plot to make you poorer.
bryanlarsen 10y ago
It's interesting to see the term neoliberal become such an insult for so many people. To oversimplify, neoliberal means 'socially left, fiscally right'. The difference between a libertarian and a neoliberal is that a libertarian believes that markets and property rights (aka capitalism) are the end goal, and a neoliberal believes that those are powerful tools to achieve the goals of the social left. I suspect that most Hacker News readers are actually neoliberals. The strong support for Universal Basic Income on Hacker News is evidence of such, since UBI is a very neoliberal platform. In that sense the article is very correct. https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b809a2a588d6#.h2cnvb48x https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
- mikhailt 10y ago
  I am just asking, not stating a fact. Is it possible people are associating Neo <anything> because it sounds like Neo Nazis and it just instantly turns it into a negative association? I know every time I hear Neoliberal, I cannot stop myself from hearing Neo Nazi either. It sounds like a good PR rebranding would help here.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    I don't think so; at least I haven't had this thought and haven't heard it used in insults for the movement. I've tended to assume that neo<foo> is disreputable in a larger sense, because it indicates a departure from older, popular principles. Modern neoliberalism in particular suffers from an association with neoconservatism, with progressives damning it as a vaguely social-left reinvention of Fukayama. Both have acquired a connotation of elitism, aggressive monetarism, and foreign intervention that sours populist movements from either side against them.
- lucozade 10y ago
  > neoliberal means 'socially left, fiscally right' Maybe originally. Whenever I've seen it used in a publication (almost invariably left wing) it tends to be synonymous with "nasty idea I don't agree with". Interestingly it's often antonymous with the term "progressive".
msoad 10y ago
One thing UBI can not avoid is people making bad decisions. Specially lower income people. If we eliminate all public and often free social services and hand over the money instead, I doubt a lot of people will save for retirement or pay for education. Any long term investment is counter intuitive and if it's on people they will likely avoid it. A good example of this is 401k contributions. When employers have default contributions people do it. Of its opt-in most people don't do it. There was a study for the iirc
tricknik 10y ago
By the way, what does "flagged" mean above?

37 points by kawera 10y ago

Misleading title. The author makes the argument that UBI would trade off with other vital social services and that's bad. It's fine to point this out as a risk of UBI adoption, but it certainly isn't an argument for why UBI is inherently bad. Plenty of people would be happy to see UBI co-existing with long standing social benefits.

thescribe 10y ago
I guess I do not see the point of UBI, if not the total elimination of other social programs.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  A major point of UBI is to eliminate (or reduce) adverse incentives inherent in means-tested social benefit programs; it can easily do this while replacing only some existing means-tested social benefit programs, leaving other social benefit programs (means tested and otherwise) in place.

basicplus2 10y ago

articles stating Universal Basic income is a Neolibral plot to make you poorer is a neolibral plot to make you vote against Universal Income to make you poorer

skrowl 10y ago

All welfare (direct payment from a government to an individual) systems are designed to make you poorer and more controllable. Universal basic income is no different in this regard.

altcognito 10y ago
It's strange that corporations spend so much time and effort lobbying for tax breaks, grants and credits, what with them making them so poor and controllable.
ahoy 10y ago
An odd assertion - "having more money makes you poorer".
- socialist_coder 10y ago
  Well, the argument in the article is that basic necessities are priced based on what people can afford. So, if everyone is getting UBI, in theory they could all afford more, and so prices would just go up; bringing everyone back to where they used to be before UBI, but now without the non-UBI based benefits (food stamps, welfare, etc). But, the article does not provide any evidence (simulations or studies) to back up that claim and, in my opinion, it is not very convincing.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    In regions where housing supply is constrained it seems very likely those costs would increase in line with any increase in incomes from UBI. This makes me think the state getting involved in housing provision would have a much greater impact than UBI.
  - tricknik 10y ago
    Yes, it does provide evidence, by citing Minksy: http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/ http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/
- sebastianconcpt 10y ago
  Fiat currency is printed by taxing you via inflation. So, yeah, receiving fake money makes you poorer. And if you think it works, ask a venezuelan how that plan is working or not.

mason240 10y ago

I was wondering how long it would be before UBI started to be attacked by the far left, considering it will cement capitalism the basis for the economy and make all forms of socialism obsolete.

ahoy 10y ago
That doesn't seem to be the issue that this article raises. >a closer look at how UBI is expected to work reveals that it is intended to provide political cover for the elimination of social programs and the privatization of social services. Seems like the issue is that UBI, as it's being discussed now, will look more like "entitlement reform" than a net benefit for poor people.
- mason240 10y ago
  > intended to provide political cover for the elimination of social programs Yeah, because that's the whole point of UBI. It removes all the middlemen, all the politicians/ideologues using those programs to buy votes, the welfare cliffs, and replaces it with something that just helps people. Like with any change though, the ones who benifit from the current system (and I'm not referring to the actual beneficiaries) are going to be opposed to it. It's really going to to come down to whether you care more about implementing your ideology or actually helping poor people (and everyone else).
Kenji 10y ago
UBI is quite literally the opposite of capitalism. It is a form of socialism, so saying it makes 'all forms of socialism obsolete' is a very strange thing to say.
- nanny 10y ago
  >UBI is quite literally the opposite of capitalism. It is a form of socialism How would UBI transfer the means of production from capitalists to the workers? Don't confuse socialism with a welfare state.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

Wow, that's a strong claim backed up by... absolutely nothing of merit.

socialist_coder 10y ago
That was my take away too. There are no mentions of studies or simulations to back up the primary claim that inflation would eat away any UBI based benefits.
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  I was waiting for something too, even something flimsy. I guess the takeaway is that until this is studied and probably put into practice in pilot programs like HN's and others', we're just going to be subjected to load of ideological rhetoric.
- tricknik 10y ago
  Do you mean no studies other than the citation to Minsky who extensively shows just that? Here is the original paper: http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/ http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/429/
sebastianconcpt 10y ago
Uses the word "neoliberal" you know that is cultural marxist propaganda. Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8pPbrbJJQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8pPbrbJJQs
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  "Cultural Marxist"... irony?
  - sebastianconcpt 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Gramscianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Gramscianism

jackmott 10y ago

It isn't as if it is a secret that at the root, the goal of ideas like these is to reduce income disparity. But if the HackerNews Libertarian Army would prefer to live in a gated communities which keep the uneducated hungry masses away from their Montessori Schools and Gelato serveries, and fly by private helicopter over the wrecked and broken infrastructure to their friends in other gated communities so that they can 'keep all of their hard earned money', then so be it.

lucozade 10y ago
> the goal of ideas like these is to reduce income disparity Except when they're not. That's the point of this article. UBI is one of those ideas that can be all things to all people depending on the details. For example, say you set it at a level that could sustain an able-bodied person temporarily but needed supplementing for comfort. Say you then remove all other state funded payments. That's UBI. For example, say you set it at a level meant that most people could comfortably live off it and was topped up where necessary e.g. disability payments. That's UBI. Of these, the first is, arguably, purer UBI. It'll also do very little to reduce income disparity.
- tfnw 10y ago
  I don't actually see income disparity as the largest problem, within limits it doesn't seem too harmful. What I see as a more important goal is too enable people to choose do things based on what they find interesting/challenging instead of what gets them paid. I would see UBI as beneficial if, in practice, it at least pushes the balance in this direction a little, even if it doesn't reduce income disparity.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I'm having real trouble working out why you're posting this here. The article has nothing to do with the dystopia you're describing; an actual read-through reveals that it's concerned about UBI worsening inequality compared to the existing benefits system. It's explicitly a piece about how to reduce disparty, and whether UBI is a bad way to do so. (I note that it's currently near the top of HN, which is awkward for that "libertarian poverty-lover" narrative.) And Furtherfield is essentially an art collective with no ties to HN, so it's not that they're part of the Libertarian Army. Am I missing something here? Because I see a writer disputing whether UBI is a good way to achieve your goal, and you replying with "see? they hate my goals!"

thelamest 10y ago

> Rather than alleviating poverty, UBI will most likely exacerbate it. The core reasoning is quite simple: the prices that people pay for housing and other necessities are derived from how much they can afford to pay in the first place. Obviously, higher demand means higher prices - but people's need for "necessities" (basic food, shelter) is constant! In that case, it shouldn't rise under UBI. My intuition is that prices would only rise for more limited, optional, luxurious goods, and that's a very good thing.

dilemma 10y ago
While demand for shelter remains constant, the supply of money increases, pushing prices higher.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  If demand for shelter doesn't change, and supply for shelter doesn't change, what's pushing the price higher? Supply of money only affects prices when it can change demand or supply.
  - jerf 10y ago
    Think auction rather than static supply/demand curves. If we both used to have $500/month for shelter, and our bids settle into some stable relationship based on personal preferences, if UBI comes in and now we both have $1000/month for shelter, we can now outbid someone else who stubbornly insists that UBI shouldn't change the price. The stubborn person can either drop their stubborness and bid higher, or see themselves outbid and be forced to take something they prefer less now. The stable outcome is that the money goes to the landowners in this incredibly limited and isolated model, which I am using only to illustrate the point in a simple way. In a less simple way, there are many people, including me, who rather believe that making it easy to get money for college is the root cause of colleges getting more expensive. Having been back to my own alma mater about a year ago and seeing the unbelievably glorious meal hall they have now, which is more accurately described as a meal mall, it is abundantly clear that they have more money than they know what to do with and are spending wildly on things that have little to do with education. They're caught in their own trap; since the money is free to the students (at least for now), the university is forced to compete to be ever nicer themselves. Nobody has the power to decide to just go to a cheaper university because they'll get outcompeted by people anomalously flush with "free money". So college prices spiral ever upwards and the market mechanisms can't do much about it, because we broke the market by giving everybody "free" money, or more accurately, money whose costs were deferred beyond most people's ability to think about the future. One of the reasons I stand against UBI is that the same thing will happen. The UBI will come out, but time doesn't freeze. The UBI will then affect the economy, and people won't quite get what they wanted out it as capital owners figure out how to extract the extra funds. And the politicians will be falling over themselves to be the ones who get the credit for raising it; who would ever be re-elected who lowers the UBI? UBI takes a "free benefit" death spiral we're arguably already on and throws it into high gear, and I can't see how we'd ever escape from it short of outright collapse. Nobody will ever vote against the free money. It creates a society where the short-term incentives are always in favor of more free money, even as the long-term looms ever more obviously in everybody's face, which would actually just make the short term "get what I can while the getting's good" problem even worse. It's a catastrophically broken way to set up incentives in a society.

fromthemorning 10y ago

Neoliberals want to make you poorer, now? Say it won't work, fine, but don't say it's plot to make you poorer.

bryanlarsen 10y ago

It's interesting to see the term neoliberal become such an insult for so many people. To oversimplify, neoliberal means 'socially left, fiscally right'. The difference between a libertarian and a neoliberal is that a libertarian believes that markets and property rights (aka capitalism) are the end goal, and a neoliberal believes that those are powerful tools to achieve the goals of the social left. I suspect that most Hacker News readers are actually neoliberals. The strong support for Universal Basic Income on Hacker News is evidence of such, since UBI is a very neoliberal platform. In that sense the article is very correct. https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b809a2a588d6#.h2cnvb48x https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

mikhailt 10y ago
I am just asking, not stating a fact. Is it possible people are associating Neo <anything> because it sounds like Neo Nazis and it just instantly turns it into a negative association? I know every time I hear Neoliberal, I cannot stop myself from hearing Neo Nazi either. It sounds like a good PR rebranding would help here.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I don't think so; at least I haven't had this thought and haven't heard it used in insults for the movement. I've tended to assume that neo<foo> is disreputable in a larger sense, because it indicates a departure from older, popular principles. Modern neoliberalism in particular suffers from an association with neoconservatism, with progressives damning it as a vaguely social-left reinvention of Fukayama. Both have acquired a connotation of elitism, aggressive monetarism, and foreign intervention that sours populist movements from either side against them.
lucozade 10y ago
> neoliberal means 'socially left, fiscally right' Maybe originally. Whenever I've seen it used in a publication (almost invariably left wing) it tends to be synonymous with "nasty idea I don't agree with". Interestingly it's often antonymous with the term "progressive".

msoad 10y ago

One thing UBI can not avoid is people making bad decisions. Specially lower income people. If we eliminate all public and often free social services and hand over the money instead, I doubt a lot of people will save for retirement or pay for education. Any long term investment is counter intuitive and if it's on people they will likely avoid it. A good example of this is 401k contributions. When employers have default contributions people do it. Of its opt-in most people don't do it. There was a study for the iirc

tricknik 10y ago

By the way, what does "flagged" mean above?