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It's worse than you think. Even if all politicians agreed on what they wanted for UBI today, there is no reason to believe it would remain that way for long. Th

It's worse than you think. Even if all politicians agreed on what they wanted for UBI today, there is no reason to believe it would remain that way for long. There are any number of reasons people would want to tinker with it in the future, and some of them will be valid and will deserve to be considered -- for example, should disabled people receive more money under UBI, because they have a higher cost of living due to the necessity of wheelchair purchases, a wheelchair lift for their vehicle, or other kinds of equipment? Should UBI payments be made to people who are incarcerated? There is no country in the world I am aware of that has passed a law that implements a simple, elegant concept, such as the ideal form of UBI, and resisted the urge to tinker with it over the years. Furthermore, our current welfare systems are the way they are for powerful reasons. WIC, SNAP, the EITC, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc. all exist the way they do for a reason, and those reasons won't go away if UBI is implemented. It's very likely that UBI will end up being a re-implementation of the same ideas behind WIC, SNAP, the EITC, and other programs, for the same reasons those programs existed in the first place. We will end up turning UBI into something similar to the welfare system we have now. Tyler Cowen has been very perceptive on this point: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what-are-some-of-the-biggest-problems-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...

Bartweiss 10y ago
This is a great summary. Your final paragraph actually brings to mind the famous Don't Rewrite Software essay. Specifically: "it's just a simple function... but it has grown little hairs and stuff on it and nobody knows why. Well, I'll tell you why: those are bug fixes." I imagine that as UBI goes to the table, someone will point out that unreliable mothers will squander the money and fail to feed their kids, and so we'll replay the same arguments that created WIC. Someone else will point out that UBI doesn't save the suddenly-unemployed from defaulting on their payments, so for stability's sake we should have payments scaled by lost income, and we'll reinvent unemployment insurance. Etc. Obviously the existing welfare program could be streamlined and improved, but you're exactly right that it exists as-is for a reason. All the little convolutions exist either to make it more politically viable, or to handle some objective more specific than "give money to the poor". That's not going to disappear because UBI looks pretty.
- falcolas 10y ago
  From personal experience, unemployment scales terribly. It capped out for me at around $1,200 a month, pre tax. it's been a long time since I've tried to live on that little, and I hope it doesn't happen again.

Bartweiss 10y ago

This is a great summary. Your final paragraph actually brings to mind the famous Don't Rewrite Software essay. Specifically: "it's just a simple function... but it has grown little hairs and stuff on it and nobody knows why. Well, I'll tell you why: those are bug fixes." I imagine that as UBI goes to the table, someone will point out that unreliable mothers will squander the money and fail to feed their kids, and so we'll replay the same arguments that created WIC. Someone else will point out that UBI doesn't save the suddenly-unemployed from defaulting on their payments, so for stability's sake we should have payments scaled by lost income, and we'll reinvent unemployment insurance. Etc. Obviously the existing welfare program could be streamlined and improved, but you're exactly right that it exists as-is for a reason. All the little convolutions exist either to make it more politically viable, or to handle some objective more specific than "give money to the poor". That's not going to disappear because UBI looks pretty.

falcolas 10y ago
From personal experience, unemployment scales terribly. It capped out for me at around $1,200 a month, pre tax. it's been a long time since I've tried to live on that little, and I hope it doesn't happen again.