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>We already have people who largely do this. We won't be creating something new, we'll just be expanding it a bit, and raising their quality of life. I think t

>We already have people who largely do this. We won't be creating something new, we'll just be expanding it a bit, and raising their quality of life. I think that "expanding it a bit" is understatement. >As of right now, people on welfare are allowed to vote, and for the most part that seems to be working out ok (some may disagree here, though). Is it working? The unsustainable budgets of all Western countries seem to suggest otherwise. The collapse in family stability and the workforce participation rate since the introduction of the welfare state also suggest otherwise. The rational behavior for someone who collects of significant portion of their income from welfare is to always vote for more welfare. It is almost always in their short- to medium- term interests, and in the long run we're all dead anyway. >I'd say no. It seems to be the case that when people become wealthier they reproduce less. It's unclear why that is exactly, but it just seems to happen that way. Richer people have less kids because it's extremely expensive and time consuming to raise kids the way they'd want to, investing heavily into their educations and life experiences, going to PTA meetings, being involved with school activities, etc. I don't think this logic applies to people that are collecting checks for doing nothing. >Open borders, but you don't get social services until you've been here employed productively for say, 5 years. As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that would be totally unworkable. If the basic income is to become law, then everyone living in the country would have to receive it. If everyone else is pocketing twenty grand a year for doing nothing, then it's going to be impossible for immigrants to afford to live here without that same free money. Much in the way that it's become very difficult for single-earner households, since most households now have two earners.

darawk 10y ago
> I think that "expanding it a bit" is understatement. I'm not sure that's true. If you implemented a UBI, you'd eliminate all current welfare programs. Since a UBI does not act as a disincentive, you should actually, overall, get more labor participation. Current welfare is actively disincentivizing of labor participation. If you get a job, your overall wealth will sometimes decline. UBI does not have this problem - it simply raises the standard of what it means to be poor. Working more will always get you more resources. > Is it working? The unsustainable budgets of all Western countries seem to suggest otherwise. The collapse in family stability and the workforce participation rate since the introduction of the welfare state also suggest otherwise. The rational behavior for someone who collects of significant portion of their income from welfare is to always vote for more welfare. It is almost always in their short- to medium- term interests, and in the long run we're all dead anyway. They don't really suggest that, unless you are counting things like social security and medicare in your calculations. Straight up welfare programs are about 10% of the federal budget [1]. And social security definitely shouldn't be counted (even though it isn't necessarily a great idea), medicare you could arguably call a welfare program, but it's not exactly comparable to cash payments, and has problems that go well beyond those of a simple cash transfer program, so I would argue isn't particularly well suited to comparison here. > Richer people have less kids because it's extremely expensive and time consuming to raise kids the way they'd want to, investing heavily into their educations and life experiences, going to PTA meetings, being involved with school activities, etc. > I don't think this logic applies to people that are collecting checks for doing nothing. That is a nice story, but if it were true, it'd suggest that the richest people, who presumably have more free time also have more kids. But, they do not [2]. Now, this chart doesn't break it down beyond >200k a year, but what you see is a very steady decline. The more people make, the fewer children they have. There isn't a single group for which the trend isn't met. > As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that would be totally unworkable. If the basic income is to become law, then everyone living in the country would have to receive it. If everyone else is pocketing twenty grand a year for doing nothing, then it's going to be impossible for immigrants to afford to live here without that same free money. Much in the way that it's become very difficult for single-earner households, since most households now have two earners. Well, i'd say two things in response to that: 1. So what? All that means is that the barrier to immigration is high. That shouldn't be a problem, and it makes for a neat market-based solution to the problem of "how many immigrants do we let in". 2. In a society where everyone is given a basic income of 20k, then wages will have to rise to incentivize people to do any kind of work at all. What this means is that we can do away with the minimum wage, and allow wages to float freely in response to supply and demand. The market rate will always be a 'living wage' because people simply won't work for it if it's not. This, right here, is why UBI is so elegant. It doesn't distort markets, it just moves their boundaries, which allows them to operate with maximum efficiency, while still maintaining reasonable living standards for everyone. Now, don't get me wrong, it's entirely unclear that we can actually afford a UBI. Even if we get rid of all welfare programs and account for the economic growth that would result (or at least, that I think would). However, if and when we do have the sufficient wealth to implement a program like this, I think it makes an enormous amount of sense. Once you implement a UBI, you can wipe out tons of entire government agencies. You can get rid of rent control, minimum wage laws, all kinds of things that mess with markets and create various forms of deadweight loss. There is so much uncaptured value lying on the floor because of the inefficient ways the government tries to alleviate poverty or subsidize behavior, and every single one of them can be eliminated by the implementation of a UBI. [1] http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-wh... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  >They don't really suggest that, unless you are counting things like social security and medicare in your calculations. You must definitely count these programs, especially Social Security, which is effectively a UBI for old people (it is sold as a public pension plan that you buy into, but there's been much analysis that debunks this. Social Security is: 1) A tax program and 2) a welfare program that is vaguely and in some circumstances somewhat based on how much of the tax you payed.) >In a society where everyone is given a basic income of 20k, then wages will have to rise to incentivize people to do any kind of work at all. What this means is that we can do away with the minimum wage, and allow wages to float freely in response to supply and demand. The market rate will always be a 'living wage' because people simply won't work for it if it's not. The market rate for wages will not be a living wage. For unskilled labor, I could see it being as little as a quarter of the UBI. Most certainly not enough for a low-skill worker to sustain themselves without a UBI. I actually agree that it would be a good thing to stop taking low-skill immigrants, given our surplus of low-skill labor. Why are people so adamant about keeping the southern border open then? >That is a nice story, but if it were true, it'd suggest that the richest people, who presumably have more free time also have more kids. But, they do not [2]. Now, this chart doesn't break it down beyond >200k a year, but what you see is a very steady decline. Your data proves nothing of the sort. 200k a year for a household is not "rich", they would certainly not call themselves rich. The actual rich do seem to be having more children. http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-having-more-kids/ http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-ha...
  - darawk 10y ago
    > You must definitely count these programs, especially Social Security, which is effectively a UBI for old people (it is sold as a public pension plan that you buy into, but there's been much analysis that debunks this. Social Security is: 1) A tax program and 2) a welfare program that is vaguely and in some circumstances somewhat based on how much of the tax you payed.) I don't disagree that it is similar in effect, but your original point, I think, was that people would keep voting for an increase in it. But that just hasn't happened with social security. > The market rate for wages will not be a living wage. For unskilled labor, I could see it being as little as a quarter of the UBI. Most certainly not enough for a low-skill worker to sustain themselves without a UBI. Well, i'm not sure exactly how we can resolve this point without an experiment. But a priori, why do you think someone who is receiving a UBI would work full time for 5k more? It doesn't seem worth it to me. I mean, don't get me wrong a few people would. But to meet the demand for labor you'd need to see very large numbers of people working at this rate. > I actually agree that it would be a good thing to stop taking low-skill immigrants, given our surplus of low-skill labor. Why are people so adamant about keeping the southern border open then? I have no idea. A misplaced sense of ethics, perhaps. It's really a very weird thing. > Your data proves nothing of the sort. 200k a year for a household is not "rich", they would certainly not call themselves rich. > The actual rich do seem to be having more children. http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-ha.. http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-ha.... It's interesting, so, the data I cited included 200k and above. The data you cite seems to refer to the top 1 percent or so as having more kids. According to this: http://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/frank-talk/what-does-it-take-to-be-in-the-top-1-percent-not-as-much-as-you-think/ http://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/frank-talk/what-does... the top 1% is about 500k/year. That suggests that somewhere in the 200k-500k range the trend reverses. I'm not sure exactly what to make of that. I do concede the point that you are right, it seems that at a certain point along the curve wealth does seem to beget more children. However, i'm not sure how exactly how that relates back to our original point. Since, at least in your citation, its discussed as an ostentatious display of wealth. And it's also discussed as being extremely expensive. I suppose there are two models of child-having that would produce different outcomes: 1. The poor have lots of children because they're either dumb, unaware of contraception, don't have access to it, or have religious opposition to it. Because it does seem clear that when you are poor (unless you live in an agrarian society), having kids is a burden. Having wealth tends to ameliorate some of these things (religiosity and wealth are fairly inversely correlated - though this could be a function of the correlation between religiosity and intelligence, and intelligence and wealth, which would of course break down under a UBI). 2. Free time begets children. The people at the very top and very bottom of the income distribution presumably have more time, so they have more kids. UBI expands free time so it expands child-having. It's not exactly clear to me which of these is the case, and the truth is probably some mixture of the two. I'd be willing to concede that people receiving a UBI might be more likely to have more children, but I think it'd be offset to a fair degree by the increased access to knowledge and contraception. It'd be worth looking for instances of natural experiments to establish exactly what the numbers might look like though.

darawk 10y ago

> I think that "expanding it a bit" is understatement. I'm not sure that's true. If you implemented a UBI, you'd eliminate all current welfare programs. Since a UBI does not act as a disincentive, you should actually, overall, get more labor participation. Current welfare is actively disincentivizing of labor participation. If you get a job, your overall wealth will sometimes decline. UBI does not have this problem - it simply raises the standard of what it means to be poor. Working more will always get you more resources. > Is it working? The unsustainable budgets of all Western countries seem to suggest otherwise. The collapse in family stability and the workforce participation rate since the introduction of the welfare state also suggest otherwise. The rational behavior for someone who collects of significant portion of their income from welfare is to always vote for more welfare. It is almost always in their short- to medium- term interests, and in the long run we're all dead anyway. They don't really suggest that, unless you are counting things like social security and medicare in your calculations. Straight up welfare programs are about 10% of the federal budget [1]. And social security definitely shouldn't be counted (even though it isn't necessarily a great idea), medicare you could arguably call a welfare program, but it's not exactly comparable to cash payments, and has problems that go well beyond those of a simple cash transfer program, so I would argue isn't particularly well suited to comparison here. > Richer people have less kids because it's extremely expensive and time consuming to raise kids the way they'd want to, investing heavily into their educations and life experiences, going to PTA meetings, being involved with school activities, etc. > I don't think this logic applies to people that are collecting checks for doing nothing. That is a nice story, but if it were true, it'd suggest that the richest people, who presumably have more free time also have more kids. But, they do not [2]. Now, this chart doesn't break it down beyond >200k a year, but what you see is a very steady decline. The more people make, the fewer children they have. There isn't a single group for which the trend isn't met. > As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that would be totally unworkable. If the basic income is to become law, then everyone living in the country would have to receive it. If everyone else is pocketing twenty grand a year for doing nothing, then it's going to be impossible for immigrants to afford to live here without that same free money. Much in the way that it's become very difficult for single-earner households, since most households now have two earners. Well, i'd say two things in response to that: 1. So what? All that means is that the barrier to immigration is high. That shouldn't be a problem, and it makes for a neat market-based solution to the problem of "how many immigrants do we let in". 2. In a society where everyone is given a basic income of 20k, then wages will have to rise to incentivize people to do any kind of work at all. What this means is that we can do away with the minimum wage, and allow wages to float freely in response to supply and demand. The market rate will always be a 'living wage' because people simply won't work for it if it's not. This, right here, is why UBI is so elegant. It doesn't distort markets, it just moves their boundaries, which allows them to operate with maximum efficiency, while still maintaining reasonable living standards for everyone. Now, don't get me wrong, it's entirely unclear that we can actually afford a UBI. Even if we get rid of all welfare programs and account for the economic growth that would result (or at least, that I think would). However, if and when we do have the sufficient wealth to implement a program like this, I think it makes an enormous amount of sense. Once you implement a UBI, you can wipe out tons of entire government agencies. You can get rid of rent control, minimum wage laws, all kinds of things that mess with markets and create various forms of deadweight loss. There is so much uncaptured value lying on the floor because of the inefficient ways the government tries to alleviate poverty or subsidize behavior, and every single one of them can be eliminated by the implementation of a UBI. [1] http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-wh... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

marcoperaza 10y ago
>They don't really suggest that, unless you are counting things like social security and medicare in your calculations. You must definitely count these programs, especially Social Security, which is effectively a UBI for old people (it is sold as a public pension plan that you buy into, but there's been much analysis that debunks this. Social Security is: 1) A tax program and 2) a welfare program that is vaguely and in some circumstances somewhat based on how much of the tax you payed.) >In a society where everyone is given a basic income of 20k, then wages will have to rise to incentivize people to do any kind of work at all. What this means is that we can do away with the minimum wage, and allow wages to float freely in response to supply and demand. The market rate will always be a 'living wage' because people simply won't work for it if it's not. The market rate for wages will not be a living wage. For unskilled labor, I could see it being as little as a quarter of the UBI. Most certainly not enough for a low-skill worker to sustain themselves without a UBI. I actually agree that it would be a good thing to stop taking low-skill immigrants, given our surplus of low-skill labor. Why are people so adamant about keeping the southern border open then? >That is a nice story, but if it were true, it'd suggest that the richest people, who presumably have more free time also have more kids. But, they do not [2]. Now, this chart doesn't break it down beyond >200k a year, but what you see is a very steady decline. Your data proves nothing of the sort. 200k a year for a household is not "rich", they would certainly not call themselves rich. The actual rich do seem to be having more children. http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-having-more-kids/ http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-ha...
- darawk 10y ago
  > You must definitely count these programs, especially Social Security, which is effectively a UBI for old people (it is sold as a public pension plan that you buy into, but there's been much analysis that debunks this. Social Security is: 1) A tax program and 2) a welfare program that is vaguely and in some circumstances somewhat based on how much of the tax you payed.) I don't disagree that it is similar in effect, but your original point, I think, was that people would keep voting for an increase in it. But that just hasn't happened with social security. > The market rate for wages will not be a living wage. For unskilled labor, I could see it being as little as a quarter of the UBI. Most certainly not enough for a low-skill worker to sustain themselves without a UBI. Well, i'm not sure exactly how we can resolve this point without an experiment. But a priori, why do you think someone who is receiving a UBI would work full time for 5k more? It doesn't seem worth it to me. I mean, don't get me wrong a few people would. But to meet the demand for labor you'd need to see very large numbers of people working at this rate. > I actually agree that it would be a good thing to stop taking low-skill immigrants, given our surplus of low-skill labor. Why are people so adamant about keeping the southern border open then? I have no idea. A misplaced sense of ethics, perhaps. It's really a very weird thing. > Your data proves nothing of the sort. 200k a year for a household is not "rich", they would certainly not call themselves rich. > The actual rich do seem to be having more children. http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-ha.. http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-ha.... It's interesting, so, the data I cited included 200k and above. The data you cite seems to refer to the top 1 percent or so as having more kids. According to this: http://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/frank-talk/what-does-it-take-to-be-in-the-top-1-percent-not-as-much-as-you-think/ http://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/frank-talk/what-does... the top 1% is about 500k/year. That suggests that somewhere in the 200k-500k range the trend reverses. I'm not sure exactly what to make of that. I do concede the point that you are right, it seems that at a certain point along the curve wealth does seem to beget more children. However, i'm not sure how exactly how that relates back to our original point. Since, at least in your citation, its discussed as an ostentatious display of wealth. And it's also discussed as being extremely expensive. I suppose there are two models of child-having that would produce different outcomes: 1. The poor have lots of children because they're either dumb, unaware of contraception, don't have access to it, or have religious opposition to it. Because it does seem clear that when you are poor (unless you live in an agrarian society), having kids is a burden. Having wealth tends to ameliorate some of these things (religiosity and wealth are fairly inversely correlated - though this could be a function of the correlation between religiosity and intelligence, and intelligence and wealth, which would of course break down under a UBI). 2. Free time begets children. The people at the very top and very bottom of the income distribution presumably have more time, so they have more kids. UBI expands free time so it expands child-having. It's not exactly clear to me which of these is the case, and the truth is probably some mixture of the two. I'd be willing to concede that people receiving a UBI might be more likely to have more children, but I think it'd be offset to a fair degree by the increased access to knowledge and contraception. It'd be worth looking for instances of natural experiments to establish exactly what the numbers might look like though.