15 ms·

How basic income could fail in America

45 points by Mz 10y ago

eddee 10y ago
Americans tend to feel that it's ok to personally accept assistance, but everyone else that does is a lazy cheat.
twblalock 10y ago
I think Tyler Cowen's post, "What are some of the biggest problems with a guaranteed annual income?" is one of the better analyses of why basic income is likely to fail even if it is implemented: 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... The bottom line is that we have our current mess of welfare systems because social, moral, and political forces have made it that way. Those forces will warp basic income into something resembling the system we have today by adding all kinds of exceptions and supplementary programs to it -- most of which will be politically popular and morally justifiable to most people. Think of it as Mostly Universal Complicated Income.
- nhaehnle 10y ago
  Along the line of relevant analyses, there was an insightful post by Brad DeLong recently: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of-insufficient-market-wages-inadequate-social-insurance-polanyian-disruption-of-patterns-of-life-.html http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of... Apart from the clunky title, the bottom line is this: Most people don't want to be taken advantage of, but they also don't want to feel like they are taking advantage of others. This is a useful heuristic for living in small social groups. But most of the value that is being produced today is not really down to individual contributions, but results from our collective inheritance of technology and productive networks in society. This completely messes up the built-in heuristics of humans. It's basically a different angle from which to view what you wrote and sama is stated as saying in the article.
  - irickt 10y ago
    The larger point of that article is an important frame for this discussion: Everyone's income is based on the total economic surplus. No one's value to society is equivalent to their income.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  Universal income is so complex and transformational that we have to assume that before it can be implemented in scale in the US, the prerequisites such as a welfare state with single payer healthcare will seem as a minor obstacle along the road. I guess what I'm saying is that "those forces" will have to change first, and that's the small problem. UBI is already a realistic possibility in some places but I think it's a few decades out (at least) in the US. The places that can make realistic attempts to implement it now are those with large cradle-to-grave welfare systems and and an economic outlook that requires stimulus, which is why Finland is such an interesting example.
- pitaj 10y ago
  So essentially universal basic income will fail because it won't be implemented universally or basically.
maxxxxx 10y ago
Basic income will require a major shift in attitudes. We already have a situation where even highly profitable companies refuse to pass on to their employees more share of profit than absolutely necessary. Why would the people who make these decisions support basic income? And they are the ones ultimately in power. I bet even if basic income was implemented media would soon be full of stories of slackers not doing anything and soon politicians would run on a platform of cutting basic income. So I the end it wouldn't look much different from what we have now. I think it would be much more important to address income inquality. Maybe the share of national income that people like Altman receive is just too high? How about making sure that someone who is working 40 hours per week can actually live off that income ?
- glibgil 10y ago
  The shift in attitude needs to be that slackers are being paid to stay out of the way of people that want to work and that's a good thing
  - twblalock 10y ago
    > The shift in attitude needs to be that slackers are being paid to stay out of the way of people that want to work and that's a good thing The people who work, who I assume are the intended audience of your argument, will also be aware that their income taxes are going directly into the pockets of the slackers. The perception that hardworking peoples' income tax goes to people who do not deserve it is at the root of much of the opposition to welfare programs today. It's such a strong sentiment that it makes it difficult to get political support for even the rudimentary safety net we have now -- it would be an even more potent political argument against UBI.
    - thaumaturgy 10y ago
      I can't tell if this is an argument you are making, or just an argument you're saying exists, but there are several problems with it. First, "hardworking peoples' income tax" already goes to people who, in their view, don't deserve it. Not just in the form of welfare and social programs that already exist, but also in the form of massive business in the defense industry or in the environmental industry, depending on where your political views lie. Second, I'm far, far less concerned with who gets my tax money -- or even, to some extent, how much I have to pay for taxes -- than I am with my own financial future. If someone wants to propose a program which would make my taxes go up but also substantially increase my supply of potential customers ... that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
2sk21 10y ago
Another prerequisite for basic income would have to be the separation of health care from job based health insurance.
marcell 10y ago
How about an alternate idea of "basic employment"? The government guarantees a job to anyone who wants one, but they do have to show up to work. These can be jobs that are at a loss, and are explicitly "make work" jobs. For example, cleaning up parks, repairing roads, etc. This may solve some issues with basic income: it's not "free" money, which doesn't present as much of a problem to people's values. It won't feel like a handout, and people will more easily transition back to a real job if they want.
- abannin 10y ago
  How very Keynesian.
- ng12 10y ago
  The biggest turn off for me is that most UBI advocates seem to have the opinion that people freed from jobs will turn into philosophers or artists or otherwise make productive use of their time. I argue you don't really have to look very far to find the answer to that question: check out what an underemployed ~25yo from a small rust-belt town is up to. Chances are not a whole lot. That's why I'm really in favor of a scheme like this. Ensure that people supported by the community at least give something back. Go a step further and increase funding for the arts so we can create jobs there too.
  - rosser 10y ago
    You can't very meaningfully use someone's not making "productive use of their time" while lacking employment (and therefore income) as an argument against UBI. They don't have the income that might — yes, might — enable them to be their flavor of productive.
    - vivekd 10y ago
      I suspect that a lot of people's flavor of productive might turn on "artist" or "writer" where very few will be interested in "coal mine equipment operator", or "customer service person for DELL." For the foreseeable future there will always be jobs people don't want to do that machines aren't capable of taking over.
jimmywanger 10y ago
Basic income will have to come with extremely limited immigration EDIT: or immigrants will be ineligible for the income. That's something that a lot of people miss, that a universal basic income in a developed country (US, Western Europe) corresponds to a lifestyle of the lap of luxury in most other parts of the world.
- twblalock 10y ago
  This is an important point, especially because the first country that implements UBI will be the most attractive country to immigrate to for people who have no value to employers. Many potential immigrants who want to work hard will choose to go to other countries, so the country with UBI will miss out on their productivity and their tax dollars. That would certainly put a burden on the UBI system.
  - EduardoBautista 10y ago
    What immigration system allows people who have no desirable skills to immigrate currently?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - dingo_bat 10y ago
      Th kind in which cities refuse to enforce federal laws, eg, New York.
- thisrod 10y ago
  The developed world already has this problem: Australian unemployment benefits are on the same order as most UBI proposals. The current Australian response is the systematic rape and murder of unauthorised immigrants, which most of the country thinks isn't tough enough. (That is literally true, not a joke.) So this can go very wrong.
  - 10y ago
Girlang 10y ago
I once went to a committee meeting held by an interfaith organization who wants universal Pre-K education. In CA, this will cost about $4500/student by the teacher's own estimates. I asked "Why don't we just pay parents with pre-K aged kids, say $3500/year. We will say the money is to enhance the educational environment of the child, but it will be up to the parent to spend it and the money will have few strings attached. The schoolteachers in the room told me I was an idiot and to shut up.
abannin 10y ago
Paying people to not contribute to GDP will result in decreased GDP. Lower GDP means less income to be distributed. UBI is not the first time someone has proposed that a central authority should determine the income of the general population. It doesn't take much research into Russia to recognize this as 'serfdom'.
- invaliduser 10y ago
  Increasing the GDP is easy. First, pay me 50$ to dig a hole. Then I pay you 50$ to fill the very same hole. We created nothing but the GDP increased by 100$ (well, tax aside). original source of this example: https://ploum.net/largent-doit-il-etre-notre-seul-objectif/ https://ploum.net/largent-doit-il-etre-notre-seul-objectif/ (in french, but interesting essay)
  - vivekd 10y ago
    Yeah, try that in scale for a few years and watch the economy collapse under runaway inflation.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - twblalock 10y ago
      You're missing the point. The point is that GDP increases don't necessarily mean productive work is being done.
      - vivekd 10y ago
        Not on the short term no, but when you scale it on the long term it evens out and artificial increases like Keynesian style economics are temporary and GDP is in fact a good indicator of productivity. The original argument was that GDP would decrease if we had less people producing, the counter argument seems "we could make GDP artificially increase" presumably as a way to suggest that GDP isn't meaningful. That's not a very good argument because artificial GDP inflation is a temporary solution that has devastating results down the line
thaumaturgy 10y ago
> Altman envisions a scenario in which the majority of Americans, fresh off their initial basic income payments, become perfectly content to sit at home in their virtual reality headsets. He questions whether that future is necessarily better than the stimulation and (modest) physical activity found in commuting to work and chatting with coworkers. > "People do form bonds with their community and their society through work," he says. "And I think it does contribute to our national cohesion." I'm biased by my experiences and by the company I keep, but I doubt this is at all a likely outcome, at least for the majority of people. I know exactly one person that would be content to sit inside a small room all day long, eat just enough to exist, and spend his time playing video games. That's his passion, and as awful a life as it would be for me, I can't really say it's wrong. Everyone else I know would rather spend their time outdoors or in their community or doing something that doesn't always have to have money attached to it. There are about 120 volunteers in our county's search and rescue organization and we'd be happy to have more [1]. There's another group self-funding an indoor climbing facility. Other groups working on improving the county's economy, attracting more talent, improving the organization of the talent we have. Still another group that runs a maker space. It could be that this county is an outlier or it could be the people I choose to associate with, but I've yet to see for myself any evidence that basic income would make people socialize less or even be less productive. The opposite, in fact. [1]: Come to think of it, the overwhelming majority of our search and rescue volunteers are all retired people -- they're the only ones that have the time and residual income to handle the commitment it requires. There are a few professionals with semi-flexible schedules, and fewer still business owners like myself that have managed to eke out some of the benefits of retirement before actually reaching retirement age.
- edoceo 10y ago
  This county sounds nice. Where is it? Do you have good bandwidth?
  - thaumaturgy 10y ago
    Nevada County, California. Not really that far from the Bay Area. Bandwidth is currently spotty -- your best bet is Comcast in their small and crowded service areas -- but a local ISP has secured funding for a large last-mile fiber deployment and I think they've either just broken ground or are about to. It's beautiful here, you can get to the store and back in 5 minutes, you can go to Tahoe or to Sacramento for the day, and, seriously, it seems like everyone is always doing at least three cool things. http://gonevadacounty.com/ http://gonevadacounty.com/ We're pretty high-tech for a rural county too, and we're actively recruiting tech companies to come up here. If someone's seriously interested in relocating, contact me. I'm pretty plugged-in to the folks pulling strings to make it happen.
remarkEon 10y ago
One thing I haven't really seen adequately addressed is this: what happens when some people inevitably waste their $2000 a month stipend on non-essentials and then don't have enough money for rent or food? Do we just end up recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI? Perhaps a better way to ask that is, what would stop us from recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI?
- crooked-v 10y ago
  > what would stop us from recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI? The same thing that stops us from recreating the current welfare state on top of the current welfare state to protect people who barter away all their food stamps for drugs.
- twblalock 10y ago
  > Perhaps a better way to ask that is, what would stop us from recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI? In a democracy? Nothing can prevent that. Even if we wrote UBI into the constitution, it could always be amended. There are always going to be proposals to give some people different amounts of money than others under basic income, and some of those proposals will gain enough voter support to pass. You may be interested in Tyler Cowen's post on this subject, which I posted about elsewhere in this thread: 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...
- dllthomas 10y ago
  For one thing, any "recreated system" would be dealing with fewer people. For another, it would be clear that the help those people need is of a different kind.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  What happened to create all those homeless people that exist today? They have no income whatsoever. If you waste 1 months income of UBI and end up on the street, you will have learned a very harsh lesson, but there will always be the next payment coming. Hence if you're not a total imbecile, you presumably will make better use of money in the future. This "thing" is not addressed because it really isn't an issue for UBI. What happens to a teenager who wastes say a $1000 present for his 18th birthday? Presumably they become better at managing money.
xt00 10y ago
If the goal is to have more people working and we assume that the government would be paying the money for this "basic income", why don't we just subsidize companies that hire lots of people based upon how many people they have. And if you focus it toward jobs that require low skill only and manufacturing, then it directly benefits many companies in the US that would probably choose the same price for having something built in the US vs China. I am honestly pretty tired of flying to china to get products built.. Been doing it for years and I'd prefer to fly to Texas instead..
throw2016 10y ago
Basic income seems to be an acknowledgement capitalism does not work for the majority, wealth concentrates at the top, and self interest of a few take precedence. Here are a few tiny scraps is akin to a kind of feudalism. How do they assert influence in a such a structure? Is life to become a spectator sport? Do people gain purpose from a collective goal in which each plays a part or one in which they sit on the sidelines? Wouldn't a better option for most then be to echew industrialization and 'progress' and revert to the land and village like communities. The costs of too many unemployed and underemployed is far too high on multiple levels including to those who are not in either group than any social or welfare net and it's absence leads to higly unstable and fractured societies. But is basic income really an answer in an inherently calvinist society? Add to that the preponderance of the soulless ideology of Rand among sections of US society and the entire social goal it seems has been effectively reduced to celebrating personal achievement and supermen and superwomen. There are large questions around human progress, how to define it and the best way to achieve it that need to be revisited. Is a society merely economic interests coexisting or does it mean more than that?
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Basic income seems to be an acknowledgement capitalism does not work for the majority, wealth concentrates at the top, and self interest of a few take precedence. This is what the leftist want you to believe.
  - Dagwoodie 10y ago
    Nothing will ever work to bridge the wealth gap. The best we can possibly achieve is equal pay for equal work.
    - throw2016 10y ago
      I think the gap however large is never a problem. It's if the influence of that concentration is allowed to subvert systems to self interest as extreme concentration of wealth tends to do then it becomes a destructive cycle for everyone else. It doesn't matter if Bill gates or Queen Elizabeth has billions as long as everyone else is not bad off. If everyone starts a 100m race and someone wins its fair, but this is a race where the privileged have advantages in too many ways from the time they are born and the unprivileged disadvantaged in too many ways and equality in opportunity in the context becomes nearly impossible beyond posturing and tokenism.
elihu 10y ago
I'm curious whether the basic income studies being done by Sam Altman and others will also cover what happens when subsidies are withdrawn? Ideally, UBI would be guaranteed and never withdrawn, but it would be a pretty good argument for basic income if you can say that people continue to have a better outcome for years after payments stop versus people who never were enrolled in the first place. On the other hand, if most people become dependent on the payments and do worse than the control group when payments stop, that would be a strong argument against UBI. (I imagine the outcome might also be very different between study participants that know their payments are going to stop at a certain time, participants who have their payments withdrawn suddenly without warning, and participants who are told in advance that their payments might be withdrawn at any time.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
scottostler 10y ago
I liked this quote from the article: "People don't choose between things, they choose between descriptions of things." I can't claim to know what BI would look like if widely implemented, but I think it's preferable to mass un/under-employment, which seems like a clear possibility.

45 points by Mz 10y ago

eddee 10y ago

Americans tend to feel that it's ok to personally accept assistance, but everyone else that does is a lazy cheat.

I think Tyler Cowen's post, "What are some of the biggest problems with a guaranteed annual income?" is one of the better analyses of why basic income is likely to fail even if it is implemented: 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... The bottom line is that we have our current mess of welfare systems because social, moral, and political forces have made it that way. Those forces will warp basic income into something resembling the system we have today by adding all kinds of exceptions and supplementary programs to it -- most of which will be politically popular and morally justifiable to most people. Think of it as Mostly Universal Complicated Income.

nhaehnle 10y ago
Along the line of relevant analyses, there was an insightful post by Brad DeLong recently: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of-insufficient-market-wages-inadequate-social-insurance-polanyian-disruption-of-patterns-of-life-.html http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of... Apart from the clunky title, the bottom line is this: Most people don't want to be taken advantage of, but they also don't want to feel like they are taking advantage of others. This is a useful heuristic for living in small social groups. But most of the value that is being produced today is not really down to individual contributions, but results from our collective inheritance of technology and productive networks in society. This completely messes up the built-in heuristics of humans. It's basically a different angle from which to view what you wrote and sama is stated as saying in the article.
- irickt 10y ago
  The larger point of that article is an important frame for this discussion: Everyone's income is based on the total economic surplus. No one's value to society is equivalent to their income.
alkonaut 10y ago
Universal income is so complex and transformational that we have to assume that before it can be implemented in scale in the US, the prerequisites such as a welfare state with single payer healthcare will seem as a minor obstacle along the road. I guess what I'm saying is that "those forces" will have to change first, and that's the small problem. UBI is already a realistic possibility in some places but I think it's a few decades out (at least) in the US. The places that can make realistic attempts to implement it now are those with large cradle-to-grave welfare systems and and an economic outlook that requires stimulus, which is why Finland is such an interesting example.
pitaj 10y ago
So essentially universal basic income will fail because it won't be implemented universally or basically.

maxxxxx 10y ago

Basic income will require a major shift in attitudes. We already have a situation where even highly profitable companies refuse to pass on to their employees more share of profit than absolutely necessary. Why would the people who make these decisions support basic income? And they are the ones ultimately in power. I bet even if basic income was implemented media would soon be full of stories of slackers not doing anything and soon politicians would run on a platform of cutting basic income. So I the end it wouldn't look much different from what we have now. I think it would be much more important to address income inquality. Maybe the share of national income that people like Altman receive is just too high? How about making sure that someone who is working 40 hours per week can actually live off that income ?

glibgil 10y ago
The shift in attitude needs to be that slackers are being paid to stay out of the way of people that want to work and that's a good thing
- twblalock 10y ago
  > The shift in attitude needs to be that slackers are being paid to stay out of the way of people that want to work and that's a good thing The people who work, who I assume are the intended audience of your argument, will also be aware that their income taxes are going directly into the pockets of the slackers. The perception that hardworking peoples' income tax goes to people who do not deserve it is at the root of much of the opposition to welfare programs today. It's such a strong sentiment that it makes it difficult to get political support for even the rudimentary safety net we have now -- it would be an even more potent political argument against UBI.
  - thaumaturgy 10y ago
    I can't tell if this is an argument you are making, or just an argument you're saying exists, but there are several problems with it. First, "hardworking peoples' income tax" already goes to people who, in their view, don't deserve it. Not just in the form of welfare and social programs that already exist, but also in the form of massive business in the defense industry or in the environmental industry, depending on where your political views lie. Second, I'm far, far less concerned with who gets my tax money -- or even, to some extent, how much I have to pay for taxes -- than I am with my own financial future. If someone wants to propose a program which would make my taxes go up but also substantially increase my supply of potential customers ... that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

2sk21 10y ago

Another prerequisite for basic income would have to be the separation of health care from job based health insurance.

marcell 10y ago

How about an alternate idea of "basic employment"? The government guarantees a job to anyone who wants one, but they do have to show up to work. These can be jobs that are at a loss, and are explicitly "make work" jobs. For example, cleaning up parks, repairing roads, etc. This may solve some issues with basic income: it's not "free" money, which doesn't present as much of a problem to people's values. It won't feel like a handout, and people will more easily transition back to a real job if they want.

abannin 10y ago
How very Keynesian.
ng12 10y ago
The biggest turn off for me is that most UBI advocates seem to have the opinion that people freed from jobs will turn into philosophers or artists or otherwise make productive use of their time. I argue you don't really have to look very far to find the answer to that question: check out what an underemployed ~25yo from a small rust-belt town is up to. Chances are not a whole lot. That's why I'm really in favor of a scheme like this. Ensure that people supported by the community at least give something back. Go a step further and increase funding for the arts so we can create jobs there too.
- rosser 10y ago
  You can't very meaningfully use someone's not making "productive use of their time" while lacking employment (and therefore income) as an argument against UBI. They don't have the income that might — yes, might — enable them to be their flavor of productive.
  - vivekd 10y ago
    I suspect that a lot of people's flavor of productive might turn on "artist" or "writer" where very few will be interested in "coal mine equipment operator", or "customer service person for DELL." For the foreseeable future there will always be jobs people don't want to do that machines aren't capable of taking over.

jimmywanger 10y ago

Basic income will have to come with extremely limited immigration EDIT: or immigrants will be ineligible for the income. That's something that a lot of people miss, that a universal basic income in a developed country (US, Western Europe) corresponds to a lifestyle of the lap of luxury in most other parts of the world.

twblalock 10y ago
This is an important point, especially because the first country that implements UBI will be the most attractive country to immigrate to for people who have no value to employers. Many potential immigrants who want to work hard will choose to go to other countries, so the country with UBI will miss out on their productivity and their tax dollars. That would certainly put a burden on the UBI system.
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  What immigration system allows people who have no desirable skills to immigrate currently?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dingo_bat 10y ago
    Th kind in which cities refuse to enforce federal laws, eg, New York.
thisrod 10y ago
The developed world already has this problem: Australian unemployment benefits are on the same order as most UBI proposals. The current Australian response is the systematic rape and murder of unauthorised immigrants, which most of the country thinks isn't tough enough. (That is literally true, not a joke.) So this can go very wrong.
- 10y ago

Girlang 10y ago

I once went to a committee meeting held by an interfaith organization who wants universal Pre-K education. In CA, this will cost about $4500/student by the teacher's own estimates. I asked "Why don't we just pay parents with pre-K aged kids, say $3500/year. We will say the money is to enhance the educational environment of the child, but it will be up to the parent to spend it and the money will have few strings attached. The schoolteachers in the room told me I was an idiot and to shut up.

abannin 10y ago

Paying people to not contribute to GDP will result in decreased GDP. Lower GDP means less income to be distributed. UBI is not the first time someone has proposed that a central authority should determine the income of the general population. It doesn't take much research into Russia to recognize this as 'serfdom'.

invaliduser 10y ago
Increasing the GDP is easy. First, pay me 50$ to dig a hole. Then I pay you 50$ to fill the very same hole. We created nothing but the GDP increased by 100$ (well, tax aside). original source of this example: https://ploum.net/largent-doit-il-etre-notre-seul-objectif/ https://ploum.net/largent-doit-il-etre-notre-seul-objectif/ (in french, but interesting essay)
- vivekd 10y ago
  Yeah, try that in scale for a few years and watch the economy collapse under runaway inflation.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - twblalock 10y ago
    You're missing the point. The point is that GDP increases don't necessarily mean productive work is being done.
    - vivekd 10y ago
      Not on the short term no, but when you scale it on the long term it evens out and artificial increases like Keynesian style economics are temporary and GDP is in fact a good indicator of productivity. The original argument was that GDP would decrease if we had less people producing, the counter argument seems "we could make GDP artificially increase" presumably as a way to suggest that GDP isn't meaningful. That's not a very good argument because artificial GDP inflation is a temporary solution that has devastating results down the line

thaumaturgy 10y ago

> Altman envisions a scenario in which the majority of Americans, fresh off their initial basic income payments, become perfectly content to sit at home in their virtual reality headsets. He questions whether that future is necessarily better than the stimulation and (modest) physical activity found in commuting to work and chatting with coworkers. > "People do form bonds with their community and their society through work," he says. "And I think it does contribute to our national cohesion." I'm biased by my experiences and by the company I keep, but I doubt this is at all a likely outcome, at least for the majority of people. I know exactly one person that would be content to sit inside a small room all day long, eat just enough to exist, and spend his time playing video games. That's his passion, and as awful a life as it would be for me, I can't really say it's wrong. Everyone else I know would rather spend their time outdoors or in their community or doing something that doesn't always have to have money attached to it. There are about 120 volunteers in our county's search and rescue organization and we'd be happy to have more [1]. There's another group self-funding an indoor climbing facility. Other groups working on improving the county's economy, attracting more talent, improving the organization of the talent we have. Still another group that runs a maker space. It could be that this county is an outlier or it could be the people I choose to associate with, but I've yet to see for myself any evidence that basic income would make people socialize less or even be less productive. The opposite, in fact. [1]: Come to think of it, the overwhelming majority of our search and rescue volunteers are all retired people -- they're the only ones that have the time and residual income to handle the commitment it requires. There are a few professionals with semi-flexible schedules, and fewer still business owners like myself that have managed to eke out some of the benefits of retirement before actually reaching retirement age.

edoceo 10y ago
This county sounds nice. Where is it? Do you have good bandwidth?
- thaumaturgy 10y ago
  Nevada County, California. Not really that far from the Bay Area. Bandwidth is currently spotty -- your best bet is Comcast in their small and crowded service areas -- but a local ISP has secured funding for a large last-mile fiber deployment and I think they've either just broken ground or are about to. It's beautiful here, you can get to the store and back in 5 minutes, you can go to Tahoe or to Sacramento for the day, and, seriously, it seems like everyone is always doing at least three cool things. http://gonevadacounty.com/ http://gonevadacounty.com/ We're pretty high-tech for a rural county too, and we're actively recruiting tech companies to come up here. If someone's seriously interested in relocating, contact me. I'm pretty plugged-in to the folks pulling strings to make it happen.

remarkEon 10y ago

One thing I haven't really seen adequately addressed is this: what happens when some people inevitably waste their $2000 a month stipend on non-essentials and then don't have enough money for rent or food? Do we just end up recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI? Perhaps a better way to ask that is, what would stop us from recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI?

crooked-v 10y ago
> what would stop us from recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI? The same thing that stops us from recreating the current welfare state on top of the current welfare state to protect people who barter away all their food stamps for drugs.
twblalock 10y ago
> Perhaps a better way to ask that is, what would stop us from recreating the current welfare state on top of UBI? In a democracy? Nothing can prevent that. Even if we wrote UBI into the constitution, it could always be amended. There are always going to be proposals to give some people different amounts of money than others under basic income, and some of those proposals will gain enough voter support to pass. You may be interested in Tyler Cowen's post on this subject, which I posted about elsewhere in this thread: 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...
dllthomas 10y ago
For one thing, any "recreated system" would be dealing with fewer people. For another, it would be clear that the help those people need is of a different kind.
antisthenes 10y ago
What happened to create all those homeless people that exist today? They have no income whatsoever. If you waste 1 months income of UBI and end up on the street, you will have learned a very harsh lesson, but there will always be the next payment coming. Hence if you're not a total imbecile, you presumably will make better use of money in the future. This "thing" is not addressed because it really isn't an issue for UBI. What happens to a teenager who wastes say a $1000 present for his 18th birthday? Presumably they become better at managing money.

xt00 10y ago

If the goal is to have more people working and we assume that the government would be paying the money for this "basic income", why don't we just subsidize companies that hire lots of people based upon how many people they have. And if you focus it toward jobs that require low skill only and manufacturing, then it directly benefits many companies in the US that would probably choose the same price for having something built in the US vs China. I am honestly pretty tired of flying to china to get products built.. Been doing it for years and I'd prefer to fly to Texas instead..

throw2016 10y ago

Basic income seems to be an acknowledgement capitalism does not work for the majority, wealth concentrates at the top, and self interest of a few take precedence. Here are a few tiny scraps is akin to a kind of feudalism. How do they assert influence in a such a structure? Is life to become a spectator sport? Do people gain purpose from a collective goal in which each plays a part or one in which they sit on the sidelines? Wouldn't a better option for most then be to echew industrialization and 'progress' and revert to the land and village like communities. The costs of too many unemployed and underemployed is far too high on multiple levels including to those who are not in either group than any social or welfare net and it's absence leads to higly unstable and fractured societies. But is basic income really an answer in an inherently calvinist society? Add to that the preponderance of the soulless ideology of Rand among sections of US society and the entire social goal it seems has been effectively reduced to celebrating personal achievement and supermen and superwomen. There are large questions around human progress, how to define it and the best way to achieve it that need to be revisited. Is a society merely economic interests coexisting or does it mean more than that?

wolfgke 10y ago
> Basic income seems to be an acknowledgement capitalism does not work for the majority, wealth concentrates at the top, and self interest of a few take precedence. This is what the leftist want you to believe.
- Dagwoodie 10y ago
  Nothing will ever work to bridge the wealth gap. The best we can possibly achieve is equal pay for equal work.
  - throw2016 10y ago
    I think the gap however large is never a problem. It's if the influence of that concentration is allowed to subvert systems to self interest as extreme concentration of wealth tends to do then it becomes a destructive cycle for everyone else. It doesn't matter if Bill gates or Queen Elizabeth has billions as long as everyone else is not bad off. If everyone starts a 100m race and someone wins its fair, but this is a race where the privileged have advantages in too many ways from the time they are born and the unprivileged disadvantaged in too many ways and equality in opportunity in the context becomes nearly impossible beyond posturing and tokenism.

elihu 10y ago

I'm curious whether the basic income studies being done by Sam Altman and others will also cover what happens when subsidies are withdrawn? Ideally, UBI would be guaranteed and never withdrawn, but it would be a pretty good argument for basic income if you can say that people continue to have a better outcome for years after payments stop versus people who never were enrolled in the first place. On the other hand, if most people become dependent on the payments and do worse than the control group when payments stop, that would be a strong argument against UBI. (I imagine the outcome might also be very different between study participants that know their payments are going to stop at a certain time, participants who have their payments withdrawn suddenly without warning, and participants who are told in advance that their payments might be withdrawn at any time.)

deleted 10y ago

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scottostler 10y ago

I liked this quote from the article: "People don't choose between things, they choose between descriptions of things." I can't claim to know what BI would look like if widely implemented, but I think it's preferable to mass un/under-employment, which seems like a clear possibility.