4 ms·

Stefan Molyneux on Universal Basic Income

11 points by MichaelBurge 10y ago

h4nkoslo 10y ago
UBI won't get rid of the rest of the welfare state, so it just ends up being another transfer program. SF is not going to give up their $250M / year in "homeless services", and no government department is going to give up their special snowflake limited-eligibility programs when that is the source of all of their employment and power. For context, in SF alone for one sector (homeless services), "Eight city departments oversee at least 400 contracts to 76 private organizations, most of them nonprofits, that deal with homelessness." I would be unsurprised if employment from administering these services was higher than the number of homeless "clients". http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record...
scotty79 10y ago
tl;dw?
- turtleofdeath 10y ago
  tl;dw: Basic Income has been so thoroughly theorized and determined to be a stupid idea that we shouldn't try it or we'll end up a welfare state forever.
  - scotty79 10y ago
    I don't see this guy citing any sources. I listened through some of his arguments and they are very simplistic and only compelling be because he selectively mentions some effects completely ignoring others. Nothing coming out of any research. Just few thing you can pull out of your head after hearing idea fo the first time while drunk.
wiz21c 10y ago
"if you tax companies more, then prices will increase." I stopped there. That's so "let's not change anything"...
- scotty79 10y ago
  If I were a company owner I would be thrilled if I could drop salaries by 12000 dollars and/or have my customers have additional 12000 dollars of additional disposable income. I'd gladly paid some more tax for that, especially if my competition paid it too and especially if some comapnies that are stealing my customers by driving the prices down thanks to exploiting their employees would go out of business becouse their employees would finally have enough comfort too look for another job.
loorinm 10y ago
I don't buy the whole "Raising taxes on the rich will cause general prices to go up and inflation". He provides no explanation for why that is true. Countries such as Denmark tax the rich heavily and do not have those effects.
aminok 10y ago
Molyneux is right about almost everything, but forcible redistribution programs like Yubi don't cause inflation unless they're paid for through seigniorage. An income tax, and in particular a corporate income tax, is mostly a tax on profit. You're redistributing monies that would have been received as profit, as welfare. This is a popular idea because "the rich/corporations are too rich and don't need billions in profits etc". The end result of robbing people of the profit that they earn from their efforts is to get less effort, and in particular, less investment. This results in a decline in the growth rate of the economy, or even a contraction in the size of the economy (if the rate of capital formation falls below the rate of capital depreciation - if this happens, then Molyneaux's statement will become correct, as there will be inflation due to lower supply of goods relative to currency units). The last 40 years have overseen a massive increase in the scale of forcible income redistribution, and thus serve as a good natural experiment in welfare economics. The result of massively increasing the scale of forcible redistribution will likely be the same as the effect we've seen over the last 40 years: slowing productivity growth, and consequently wage growth stagnation. Of course, people believe what they want to believe, so they ignore the lessons of history and double down on a failed ideology that is the root cause of almost all social ills.
- commentzorro 10y ago
  > The end result of robbing people of the profit that they earn from their efforts is to get less effort, and in particular, less investment. Here's your fallacy. This is simply and factually not true. (I'll leave it to you to not put in the effort to research this as I couldn't even put in the effort to watch the video.)
  - aminok 10y ago
    You're deluding yourself, and ignoring vast amounts of evidence, in believing that reducing the reward for effort/investment will not result in less of both. Like I said: "people believe what they want to believe". You want to believe that welfarism works.
    - 10y ago
urmish 10y ago
It looks like some alternate universe. Stefan Molyneux on the front page of HN.

11 points by MichaelBurge 10y ago

UBI won't get rid of the rest of the welfare state, so it just ends up being another transfer program. SF is not going to give up their $250M / year in "homeless services", and no government department is going to give up their special snowflake limited-eligibility programs when that is the source of all of their employment and power. For context, in SF alone for one sector (homeless services), "Eight city departments oversee at least 400 contracts to 76 private organizations, most of them nonprofits, that deal with homelessness." I would be unsurprised if employment from administering these services was higher than the number of homeless "clients". http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record...

scotty79 10y ago

tl;dw?

turtleofdeath 10y ago
tl;dw: Basic Income has been so thoroughly theorized and determined to be a stupid idea that we shouldn't try it or we'll end up a welfare state forever.
- scotty79 10y ago
  I don't see this guy citing any sources. I listened through some of his arguments and they are very simplistic and only compelling be because he selectively mentions some effects completely ignoring others. Nothing coming out of any research. Just few thing you can pull out of your head after hearing idea fo the first time while drunk.

wiz21c 10y ago

"if you tax companies more, then prices will increase." I stopped there. That's so "let's not change anything"...

scotty79 10y ago
If I were a company owner I would be thrilled if I could drop salaries by 12000 dollars and/or have my customers have additional 12000 dollars of additional disposable income. I'd gladly paid some more tax for that, especially if my competition paid it too and especially if some comapnies that are stealing my customers by driving the prices down thanks to exploiting their employees would go out of business becouse their employees would finally have enough comfort too look for another job.

loorinm 10y ago

I don't buy the whole "Raising taxes on the rich will cause general prices to go up and inflation". He provides no explanation for why that is true. Countries such as Denmark tax the rich heavily and do not have those effects.

aminok 10y ago

Molyneux is right about almost everything, but forcible redistribution programs like Yubi don't cause inflation unless they're paid for through seigniorage. An income tax, and in particular a corporate income tax, is mostly a tax on profit. You're redistributing monies that would have been received as profit, as welfare. This is a popular idea because "the rich/corporations are too rich and don't need billions in profits etc". The end result of robbing people of the profit that they earn from their efforts is to get less effort, and in particular, less investment. This results in a decline in the growth rate of the economy, or even a contraction in the size of the economy (if the rate of capital formation falls below the rate of capital depreciation - if this happens, then Molyneaux's statement will become correct, as there will be inflation due to lower supply of goods relative to currency units). The last 40 years have overseen a massive increase in the scale of forcible income redistribution, and thus serve as a good natural experiment in welfare economics. The result of massively increasing the scale of forcible redistribution will likely be the same as the effect we've seen over the last 40 years: slowing productivity growth, and consequently wage growth stagnation. Of course, people believe what they want to believe, so they ignore the lessons of history and double down on a failed ideology that is the root cause of almost all social ills.

commentzorro 10y ago
> The end result of robbing people of the profit that they earn from their efforts is to get less effort, and in particular, less investment. Here's your fallacy. This is simply and factually not true. (I'll leave it to you to not put in the effort to research this as I couldn't even put in the effort to watch the video.)
- aminok 10y ago
  You're deluding yourself, and ignoring vast amounts of evidence, in believing that reducing the reward for effort/investment will not result in less of both. Like I said: "people believe what they want to believe". You want to believe that welfarism works.
  - 10y ago

urmish 10y ago

It looks like some alternate universe. Stefan Molyneux on the front page of HN.