4 ms·

> Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. Have you witnessed this?

by duaneb 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
1123581321 10y ago
I have seen it in every discussion. Some of the forms of evasion include: * focusing on the wealth/profit generated by a surge in entrepreneurship from the millions suddenly motivated to start successful businesses * focusing on the unlimited wealth created by robots/asteroids/solar in space which will fund any program we wish * focusing on how we can't afford not to try BI, i.e., the default system is a financial failure anyway so comparison is pointless * taking the position that BI is only replacing current welfare programs (until it's pointed out that current programs would not support anyone if spread around) Occasionally, someone will admit that they are proposing a 100% tax rate, which is about what such a system requires. Even more occasionally, it's admitted that every country must implement a 100% tax rate at once to avoid mass emigration of anyone earning more than ~$20k/year.
- xienze 10y ago
  Don't forget lots of incorrect assumptions about human nature, namely that there won't be a large, permanent underclass created by BI and that the people actually paying for BI will be more than happy to do so.
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    > Don't forget lots of incorrect assumptions about human nature, namely that there won't be a large, permanent underclass created by BI and that the people actually paying for BI will be more than happy to do so. I think almost everyone would want to work on $13-$15k a year. However, they'd work part time. And tbh, for our current welfare system, that is essentially what happens already. They work minimum wage jobs, part time, on call.
- mseebach 10y ago
  The most common evasion is in the handwaving around the size of the proposed UBI check. Total US tax revenue per person comes out to just over $20000/year, that's $1666/month (in comparison, a 40 hour workweek at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr, no holidays, comes out at $15080/year or $1256/month). If you abolished every single government program and fire every single government employee, right from the DoD down to your local playground, from congress to the schools, never mind every single existing welfare program, assuming that tax revenue somehow managed to stay at the same level, what with no IRS to collect it and 22 million newly unemployed public sector workers, you could barely afford to pay a UBI at the minimum wage, never mind attending to the people who might legitimately need more help (also, no roads or schools). UBI is either going to require cuts of a depth never proposed, much less enacted, in any western country, ever -- or be too small (perhaps a hundred dollars a month) to live up to its promises.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Or you raise taxes for the rich 1%.
    - mseebach 10y ago
      The top 1% of americans are about 3 million people and have an average income of 1 million. They already account for just short of half of all income taxes. Every time you want to raise enough revenue to give the 99% another $1,200 ($100/month), you need to raise taxes on each single member of the 1% by $120,000. And that's on average incomes of a million.
- duaneb 10y ago
  I don't think there's even a common model, yet. Some are designed only to benefit the poor, like negative income tax rates. It's kind of silly to discuss the details when there aren't any. People need to be open to giving cash to the poor to even begin thinking about how best to implement it, and the US at least has been going in the opposite direction since the original Clinton welfare reform, which emphasizes employment assistance over direct monetary assistance, with mixed results.
  - 1123581321 10y ago
    I do not agree. Understanding of and agreement on the details makes it possible for people to be open to such a broad idea. Currently, the details are discouraging, so it makes sense for proponents to downplay them, but in the long run, they will have more success solving the prerequisites and working their way up. My opinion is that a career in robotics is the most effective way of solving those prerequisites.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      Well, I would investigate negative income tax. I don't know what the current state of the UBI lobby looks like, but there are certainly flavors of UBI that are much more efficient at allocating funds where they are needed most. Negative income tax is just one flavor of the more nuanced strategies. I certainly don't think routing some percentage of money into the governments coffers just to pay out again to the same people paying it would be an attractive option, and that seems like what you're describing. I believe that is by far the least efficient model I've seen. Personally, I think it's throwing money away without also addressing healthcare costs, including nutritional reform. Sugar is only cheap when you ignore the costs of obesity we all bear in increased premiums. This is the only way of which I can conceive to implement some form of cash relief without cutting into benefits.
IsaacL 10y ago
Yes. The huge majority of pro-UBI writings I see talk up the benefits in great detail but either ignore, or misrepresent, the costs. Lots of naive idealists support UBI - but I also frequently see UBI advocates who purport to be "evidence-based" and "rational", and yet who fail to provide even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how they propose to fund their scheme. Instead they do 1 of 3 things: 1. Provide evidence countering non-essential arguments, e.g., will basic income recipients be motivated to work? This implies they've addressed the opposing side, while simultaneously ignoring the essential counter-argument, i.e., where the money comes from. 2. Hand-wave about reduced administration costs. (This is nowhere near sufficient to cover the huge increase in spending). Or automation (yeah, we have better deep learning algorithms, but machine vision, robotics and natural language processing are advancing glacially slowly, so most jobs will require a human in the loop for the foreseeable future). 3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible. With a small amount of research I found numerous counter-arguments to UBI, including a paper by the New Zealand government finding what I stated in point 3, i.e., UBI would imply benefit reductions to pensioners and the disabled and still require major tax hikes. I see many people becoming full-time advocates and researchers into UBI, claiming it to be a rational, scientific, evidence-based policy. And yet they miss these basic issues. (It's no mystery why. After realising that current welfare systems don't work, and that a UBI can't work, the logical next step is to question wealth redistribution itself, but that's too far for most). The 20th century saw many intellectuals proposing "scientific" utopian schemes while blatantly ignoring reality, with well-known results. http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Working%20papers/Treasury-A-Guaranteed-Minimum-Income-for-New-Zealand%20.PDF http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor... http://thespinoff.co.nz/featured/31-03-2016/i-love-the-idea-of-a-universal-basic-income-but-heres-the-problem/ http://thespinoff.co.nz/featured/31-03-2016/i-love-the-idea-... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-06/universal-basic-income-is-ahead-of-its-time-to-say-the-least https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-06/universal...
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  OTOH, back of the envelope calculations by detractors are usually misleading by an order of magnitude. For example 320 million Americans * 15K/year in basic income = 4.8 trillion dollars that has to come from new taxes and spending cuts. But if it all comes from tax increases than somebody currently making the average income will see their taxes go up by exactly amount as their BI payment. Is that actually a tax increase? And if we can get cost savings from simplifying welfare, then their BI payment is more than their tax increase. 4.8 Trillion is completely unfeasible, but the real cost is in the order of hundreds of billions. A heck of lot, but it is feasible.
fweespeech 10y ago
Yeah. Many people who are into BI are unwilling to admit its a very expensive proposition that they insist will be fixed with "economic growth". Its the same handwaving the GOP does. Perfect example: There are 242,470,820 adults in the US. http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am... > In my version, every American citizen age 21 and older would get a $13,000 annual grant deposited electronically into a bank account in monthly installments. Three thousand dollars must be used for health insurance (a complicated provision I won’t try to explain here), leaving every adult with $10,000 in disposable annual income for the rest of their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... ~55% of people make $30k or less and would get the full grant. He proposes b/t 30k and 60k it drops to 50%. So lets just drop it for the other 45% to 7k (instead of $6500) to keep the numbers simple. ($13,000 * 242,470,820 * .55) + ($7,000 * 242,470,820 * .45) = $2.5 trillion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... The current budget is $3.7 trillion. Healthcare + Social Security + Nondiscretionary Defense = 937+882+585 (billions) = $2.4 trillion. So you are already roughly at the same budget (despite his argument that isn't the case). Yes, he wants people 18-21 not to have access but that won't work in practice realistically some people get kicked out in this country at age 18 and have access to welfare. The argument he makes is: > The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare. As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper. Despite his age assumption & numbers being borderline unrealistic... https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... NHE per capita is ~$9,523. He wants insurance to cost $3,000, even if we magically assume 100% of that goes straight to payments. That extra $6,523 has to come from somewhere for people on Medicaid. If you get a $13,000 grant, you basically lose (realistically) access to medical care with basic income beyond very basic care. (i.e. If you get cancer, no one will cover it so you die. If you get a possibly deadly chronic disease, you can't afford it, you die.) http://kff.org/medicare/state-indicator/per-enrollee-spending-by-residence/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D http://kff.org/medicare/state-indicator/per-enrollee-spendin... That is worse for Medicare enrollees which is ~$10.3k So they lose ~$7.3k worth of care. Yes it is cheaper (using his math) but he doesn't explicitly explain the impact. It pays for itself by: 1) Cutting income for those on social security to ~$1000. ( Realistically, for the elderly, with overhead for private insurance you are spending probably ~$12 for equivalent care) 2) Cutting medical care for those on welfare currently to $0. ( Realistically, you can't pay for the current level of medical care for the average person on this BI. ) 3) Food costs will go up without subsidies, which will likely add $240 in annual costs (conservatively). So its basically cutting Social Security to ~$750/year for the elderly and cutting medical care for those in poverty to the bare essentials. Similarly, at the rate of medical inflation, the "cheaper" is almost entirely sourced from killing Social Security or Medical Care (depending on how you look at it) but it'll get worse (assuming you are adjusting BI on the CPI). And this is the most concrete article with numbers I could find in like 5 minutes of Googling it. The rest were all hand wavy. If you don't kill Medicaid/Medicare on that same proposal, and just reduce the subsidy by $3k: ($10,000 * 242,470,820 * .55) + ($5,000 * 242,470,820 * .45) = $1.88 trillion If you drop Medicare/Medicaid the budget they can take the money from is only $1.467 trillion. So now its obvious where the money came from to save those billions.

> Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. Have you witnessed this?

by duaneb 10y ago

> Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. Have you witnessed this?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

1123581321 10y ago

I have seen it in every discussion. Some of the forms of evasion include: * focusing on the wealth/profit generated by a surge in entrepreneurship from the millions suddenly motivated to start successful businesses * focusing on the unlimited wealth created by robots/asteroids/solar in space which will fund any program we wish * focusing on how we can't afford not to try BI, i.e., the default system is a financial failure anyway so comparison is pointless * taking the position that BI is only replacing current welfare programs (until it's pointed out that current programs would not support anyone if spread around) Occasionally, someone will admit that they are proposing a 100% tax rate, which is about what such a system requires. Even more occasionally, it's admitted that every country must implement a 100% tax rate at once to avoid mass emigration of anyone earning more than ~$20k/year.

xienze 10y ago
Don't forget lots of incorrect assumptions about human nature, namely that there won't be a large, permanent underclass created by BI and that the people actually paying for BI will be more than happy to do so.
- fweespeech 10y ago
  > Don't forget lots of incorrect assumptions about human nature, namely that there won't be a large, permanent underclass created by BI and that the people actually paying for BI will be more than happy to do so. I think almost everyone would want to work on $13-$15k a year. However, they'd work part time. And tbh, for our current welfare system, that is essentially what happens already. They work minimum wage jobs, part time, on call.
mseebach 10y ago
The most common evasion is in the handwaving around the size of the proposed UBI check. Total US tax revenue per person comes out to just over $20000/year, that's $1666/month (in comparison, a 40 hour workweek at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr, no holidays, comes out at $15080/year or $1256/month). If you abolished every single government program and fire every single government employee, right from the DoD down to your local playground, from congress to the schools, never mind every single existing welfare program, assuming that tax revenue somehow managed to stay at the same level, what with no IRS to collect it and 22 million newly unemployed public sector workers, you could barely afford to pay a UBI at the minimum wage, never mind attending to the people who might legitimately need more help (also, no roads or schools). UBI is either going to require cuts of a depth never proposed, much less enacted, in any western country, ever -- or be too small (perhaps a hundred dollars a month) to live up to its promises.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Or you raise taxes for the rich 1%.
  - mseebach 10y ago
    The top 1% of americans are about 3 million people and have an average income of 1 million. They already account for just short of half of all income taxes. Every time you want to raise enough revenue to give the 99% another $1,200 ($100/month), you need to raise taxes on each single member of the 1% by $120,000. And that's on average incomes of a million.
duaneb 10y ago
I don't think there's even a common model, yet. Some are designed only to benefit the poor, like negative income tax rates. It's kind of silly to discuss the details when there aren't any. People need to be open to giving cash to the poor to even begin thinking about how best to implement it, and the US at least has been going in the opposite direction since the original Clinton welfare reform, which emphasizes employment assistance over direct monetary assistance, with mixed results.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  I do not agree. Understanding of and agreement on the details makes it possible for people to be open to such a broad idea. Currently, the details are discouraging, so it makes sense for proponents to downplay them, but in the long run, they will have more success solving the prerequisites and working their way up. My opinion is that a career in robotics is the most effective way of solving those prerequisites.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Well, I would investigate negative income tax. I don't know what the current state of the UBI lobby looks like, but there are certainly flavors of UBI that are much more efficient at allocating funds where they are needed most. Negative income tax is just one flavor of the more nuanced strategies. I certainly don't think routing some percentage of money into the governments coffers just to pay out again to the same people paying it would be an attractive option, and that seems like what you're describing. I believe that is by far the least efficient model I've seen. Personally, I think it's throwing money away without also addressing healthcare costs, including nutritional reform. Sugar is only cheap when you ignore the costs of obesity we all bear in increased premiums. This is the only way of which I can conceive to implement some form of cash relief without cutting into benefits.

IsaacL 10y ago

Yes. The huge majority of pro-UBI writings I see talk up the benefits in great detail but either ignore, or misrepresent, the costs. Lots of naive idealists support UBI - but I also frequently see UBI advocates who purport to be "evidence-based" and "rational", and yet who fail to provide even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how they propose to fund their scheme. Instead they do 1 of 3 things: 1. Provide evidence countering non-essential arguments, e.g., will basic income recipients be motivated to work? This implies they've addressed the opposing side, while simultaneously ignoring the essential counter-argument, i.e., where the money comes from. 2. Hand-wave about reduced administration costs. (This is nowhere near sufficient to cover the huge increase in spending). Or automation (yeah, we have better deep learning algorithms, but machine vision, robotics and natural language processing are advancing glacially slowly, so most jobs will require a human in the loop for the foreseeable future). 3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible. With a small amount of research I found numerous counter-arguments to UBI, including a paper by the New Zealand government finding what I stated in point 3, i.e., UBI would imply benefit reductions to pensioners and the disabled and still require major tax hikes. I see many people becoming full-time advocates and researchers into UBI, claiming it to be a rational, scientific, evidence-based policy. And yet they miss these basic issues. (It's no mystery why. After realising that current welfare systems don't work, and that a UBI can't work, the logical next step is to question wealth redistribution itself, but that's too far for most). The 20th century saw many intellectuals proposing "scientific" utopian schemes while blatantly ignoring reality, with well-known results. http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Working%20papers/Treasury-A-Guaranteed-Minimum-Income-for-New-Zealand%20.PDF http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor... http://thespinoff.co.nz/featured/31-03-2016/i-love-the-idea-of-a-universal-basic-income-but-heres-the-problem/ http://thespinoff.co.nz/featured/31-03-2016/i-love-the-idea-... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-06/universal-basic-income-is-ahead-of-its-time-to-say-the-least https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-06/universal...

bryanlarsen 10y ago
OTOH, back of the envelope calculations by detractors are usually misleading by an order of magnitude. For example 320 million Americans * 15K/year in basic income = 4.8 trillion dollars that has to come from new taxes and spending cuts. But if it all comes from tax increases than somebody currently making the average income will see their taxes go up by exactly amount as their BI payment. Is that actually a tax increase? And if we can get cost savings from simplifying welfare, then their BI payment is more than their tax increase. 4.8 Trillion is completely unfeasible, but the real cost is in the order of hundreds of billions. A heck of lot, but it is feasible.

fweespeech 10y ago

Yeah. Many people who are into BI are unwilling to admit its a very expensive proposition that they insist will be fixed with "economic growth". Its the same handwaving the GOP does. Perfect example: There are 242,470,820 adults in the US. http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am... > In my version, every American citizen age 21 and older would get a $13,000 annual grant deposited electronically into a bank account in monthly installments. Three thousand dollars must be used for health insurance (a complicated provision I won’t try to explain here), leaving every adult with $10,000 in disposable annual income for the rest of their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... ~55% of people make $30k or less and would get the full grant. He proposes b/t 30k and 60k it drops to 50%. So lets just drop it for the other 45% to 7k (instead of $6500) to keep the numbers simple. ($13,000 * 242,470,820 * .55) + ($7,000 * 242,470,820 * .45) = $2.5 trillion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... The current budget is $3.7 trillion. Healthcare + Social Security + Nondiscretionary Defense = 937+882+585 (billions) = $2.4 trillion. So you are already roughly at the same budget (despite his argument that isn't the case). Yes, he wants people 18-21 not to have access but that won't work in practice realistically some people get kicked out in this country at age 18 and have access to welfare. The argument he makes is: > The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare. As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper. Despite his age assumption & numbers being borderline unrealistic... https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... NHE per capita is ~$9,523. He wants insurance to cost $3,000, even if we magically assume 100% of that goes straight to payments. That extra $6,523 has to come from somewhere for people on Medicaid. If you get a $13,000 grant, you basically lose (realistically) access to medical care with basic income beyond very basic care. (i.e. If you get cancer, no one will cover it so you die. If you get a possibly deadly chronic disease, you can't afford it, you die.) http://kff.org/medicare/state-indicator/per-enrollee-spending-by-residence/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D http://kff.org/medicare/state-indicator/per-enrollee-spendin... That is worse for Medicare enrollees which is ~$10.3k So they lose ~$7.3k worth of care. Yes it is cheaper (using his math) but he doesn't explicitly explain the impact. It pays for itself by: 1) Cutting income for those on social security to ~$1000. ( Realistically, for the elderly, with overhead for private insurance you are spending probably ~$12 for equivalent care) 2) Cutting medical care for those on welfare currently to $0. ( Realistically, you can't pay for the current level of medical care for the average person on this BI. ) 3) Food costs will go up without subsidies, which will likely add $240 in annual costs (conservatively). So its basically cutting Social Security to ~$750/year for the elderly and cutting medical care for those in poverty to the bare essentials. Similarly, at the rate of medical inflation, the "cheaper" is almost entirely sourced from killing Social Security or Medical Care (depending on how you look at it) but it'll get worse (assuming you are adjusting BI on the CPI). And this is the most concrete article with numbers I could find in like 5 minutes of Googling it. The rest were all hand wavy. If you don't kill Medicaid/Medicare on that same proposal, and just reduce the subsidy by $3k: ($10,000 * 242,470,820 * .55) + ($5,000 * 242,470,820 * .45) = $1.88 trillion If you drop Medicare/Medicaid the budget they can take the money from is only $1.467 trillion. So now its obvious where the money came from to save those billions.