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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 su

by 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
  All of them, even pro-UBI articles with numbers that can be reversed to figure out what they mean in concrete-ish terms, agree its $2 trillion or more. This one for instance (~$13k) that argues it will save money: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am... Its pretty clear the entire savings comes from cuts to Medicaid & Medicare & Agricultural subsidies. --- > 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. That one one went with a clear option #3. --- As for your solution, it works-ish, but ultimately requires maintaining Medicare & Medicaid which inflates the cost beyond what you propose or admitting you are doing #3 also. So you'd need to actually raise ~$5.8 trillion to make your system work. It can work, you'd just need to basically double the current tax levels.

by IsaacL 10y ago

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
All of them, even pro-UBI articles with numbers that can be reversed to figure out what they mean in concrete-ish terms, agree its $2 trillion or more. This one for instance (~$13k) that argues it will save money: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am... Its pretty clear the entire savings comes from cuts to Medicaid & Medicare & Agricultural subsidies. --- > 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. That one one went with a clear option #3. --- As for your solution, it works-ish, but ultimately requires maintaining Medicare & Medicaid which inflates the cost beyond what you propose or admitting you are doing #3 also. So you'd need to actually raise ~$5.8 trillion to make your system work. It can work, you'd just need to basically double the current tax levels.