9 ms·

The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

16 points by andrenth 10y ago

Spivak 10y ago
I don't care where anyone stands on the UBI proposal but we should demand a higher quality from a supposedly scholarly news source. This article reads like a first year econ class paper. Nobody who reads this piece who supports UBI will be convinced in any way by these arguments and the comments seem to suggest that this site is entirely an extremely libertarian echo chamber. The author makes matter-of-fact claims that are not backed by anything -- no data, no argument, no analysis, no citations, nothing. Even if I agreed with the author it's hard to believe him. As the author progresses it's clear that he actually has a problem with all progressive taxation, social welfare, and most government regulations and actions. It's fine to take this position but it's completely useless in a discussion about regulatory policy. You wouldn't answer a public policy question like, "should we raise the federal minimum wage to $9.25/hr" with, "I deny the authority of the federal government". Someone in support of UBI is likely fine with all of the listed 'downsides' in general -- arguments that would convince them would be an analysis or data showing that it would be ineffective. A lecture on econ 101 free market fanboyism is exactly the wrong approach to this discussion.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Mises is a Koch-funded propaganda outlet. Its not scholarly. It will never publish anything remotely counter to its agenda. Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. I find it depressing that we will always be fighting this fight.
  - aminok 10y ago
    Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. >Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. What are you referring to? Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread and butter of socialist demagoguery.
    - harrumph 10y ago
      >Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. >Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread and butter of socialist demagoguery And the bread and butter of right-wing pro-business "think tanks" is the prompting of voluntary red-baiting such as you just offered. Fact: on the basis of influence, there is no socialist or pro-cooperative-ownership analog to Mises or Manhattan Institute nor to any one of the dozens of pro-market / libertarian think tanks cranking out "science" that always finds in favor of capitalist boardrooms. That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science -- all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem domain.
      - rvdavis 10y ago
        > When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces... > That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science -- all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem domain. I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem.
        harrumph 10y ago
        >I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem. Fair enough. I hope that everybody involved will survive the encounter.
      - aminok 10y ago
        >When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. Only a mental child would believe in this caricature. And authoritarian prohibitions against consenting adults engaging in voluntary interactions, like buying an experimental drug not approved by the FDA, or working a job that doesn't provide some mandated benefit like statutory holidays, do not "protect" consumers or workers. It restricts their rights and forces them to follow government preferences over their own. Only a child would buy the socialist propaganda and believe that violating people's human rights by punishing those who don't abide by some intrusive mandate, is "protecting" them. >Fact: on the basis of influence, there is no socialist or pro-cooperative-ownership analog to Mises or Manhattan Institute nor to any one of the dozens of pro-market / libertarian think tanks cranking out "science" that always finds in favor of capitalist boardrooms. How delusional you are. There are a ton of statist and/or left wing think tanks and public policy research institutions. The Economic Policy Institute, the Center for American Progress, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities are a few of many organizations that promote highly anti-libertarian policies. The Hamilton Project, heavily funded by banks, supports a government backed central banking cartel that violates essential rights to free exchange, and numerous leftist programs designed to buy votes. Massively funded academic institutions lean heavily leftist as well.
- m3talsmith 10y ago
  Mises is one of the core Libertarian sites for economic theory.
FrostyElsa 10y ago
those are the same arguments capitalists have been using against communists/socialists for almost a century: "muh business solves everything" It doesn't. Radical income inequality causes poverty. The rich are stingy and hold onto their money like rats. To alleviate poverty it must be stripped from them and given to those who can put money back into the system (poor, working, middle classes).
lightbyte 10y ago
What a mess. >"The progressive taxation that is necessary to finance a UBI means that the more a person earns, the higher percentage of their wealth will be taken from them. The work disincentives are therefore still very much present in the tax system." I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise. >"The struggling entrepreneurs and artists mentioned earlier are struggling for a reason. For whatever reason, the market has deemed the goods they are providing to be insufficiently valuable. Their work simply isn’t productive according to those who would potentially consume the goods or services in question." What a huge leap to make from struggling to struggling because nobody wants to buy their product. They could easily be struggling purely because they left their old job to pursue this and now have no steady income. The article even suggests this initially, so I have no idea how they just ignored it. >"The universal basic income, however, allows them to continue their less-valued endeavors with the money of those who have actually produced value, which gets to the ultimate problem of all government welfare programs." Not everything needs to be about generating more wealth for yourself. This article also completely ignored the idea that eventually there just aren't going to be any jobs left for the vast majority of people to take. What do we do then? The UBI is the solution to that. I wonder why they did not discuss that: >"Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order." Oh, that's why. This is just about generating wealth and screwing over everyone in the process for them
- nodule15 10y ago
  >I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise. False. Capital gains rate, many tax credits phased out, etc.
- geebee 10y ago
  "There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise." I'm not sure if that's true, but I think the real issue is the loss of government support, particularly in terms of direct welfare. For instance, going up in salary by $10k a year wouldn't result in a lower paycheck due to taxes, but it might result in a loss of government supported child care, and might disqualify a family from government subsidized housing, either in direct benefits or access to a required set aside of "below market rents" (common in SF). Because those benefits may be worth well over 10k a year, you might experience a net loss by working. As a result, even if the tax rate is progressive, there is a transitional period for relatively low income people where the marginal "tax", if you include the loss of subsidies, is 100% or higher. As a result, there could be a powerful disincentive to work. I think this is part of the appeal of the UBI - it's "universal". Everyone gets it. You get your money regardless of whether you work. Yes, that could deter people from working, since they already get their money. But it might also encourage people to work more, since they will no longer lose those benefits at low salary levels that make working a losing proposition relative to direct government welfare.
k_lander 10y ago
My only qualm with UBI is that it needs to be Universal in the non-discriminating sense. I don't see how that could perform better than a system that at least attempts to discriminate between good and bad actors. Not to underestimate the difficulty of that task, but I feel as long as we are testing out Unconditional BI in the real world, which is great - we shouldn't miss out on experimenting with Conditional Basic Income as well. Even if you do not manage to catch all the bad actors, it could still be worthwhile improvement over otherwise. The good folks at Ethereum and other crypto based decentralized platforms have been working on useful tools like decentralized identity, smart contracts, tokens that can hopefully make this practical.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  The point is that if everyone is equal you can't have "bad actors" without explicit fraud. I'm not sure what a bad actor is in the context of UBI

16 points by andrenth 10y ago

I don't care where anyone stands on the UBI proposal but we should demand a higher quality from a supposedly scholarly news source. This article reads like a first year econ class paper. Nobody who reads this piece who supports UBI will be convinced in any way by these arguments and the comments seem to suggest that this site is entirely an extremely libertarian echo chamber. The author makes matter-of-fact claims that are not backed by anything -- no data, no argument, no analysis, no citations, nothing. Even if I agreed with the author it's hard to believe him. As the author progresses it's clear that he actually has a problem with all progressive taxation, social welfare, and most government regulations and actions. It's fine to take this position but it's completely useless in a discussion about regulatory policy. You wouldn't answer a public policy question like, "should we raise the federal minimum wage to $9.25/hr" with, "I deny the authority of the federal government". Someone in support of UBI is likely fine with all of the listed 'downsides' in general -- arguments that would convince them would be an analysis or data showing that it would be ineffective. A lecture on econ 101 free market fanboyism is exactly the wrong approach to this discussion.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Mises is a Koch-funded propaganda outlet. Its not scholarly. It will never publish anything remotely counter to its agenda. Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. I find it depressing that we will always be fighting this fight.
- aminok 10y ago
  Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. >Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. What are you referring to? Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread and butter of socialist demagoguery.
  - harrumph 10y ago
    >Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. >Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread and butter of socialist demagoguery And the bread and butter of right-wing pro-business "think tanks" is the prompting of voluntary red-baiting such as you just offered. Fact: on the basis of influence, there is no socialist or pro-cooperative-ownership analog to Mises or Manhattan Institute nor to any one of the dozens of pro-market / libertarian think tanks cranking out "science" that always finds in favor of capitalist boardrooms. That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science -- all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem domain.
    - rvdavis 10y ago
      > When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces... > That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science -- all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem domain. I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem.
      - harrumph 10y ago
        >I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem. Fair enough. I hope that everybody involved will survive the encounter.
    - aminok 10y ago
      >When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. Only a mental child would believe in this caricature. And authoritarian prohibitions against consenting adults engaging in voluntary interactions, like buying an experimental drug not approved by the FDA, or working a job that doesn't provide some mandated benefit like statutory holidays, do not "protect" consumers or workers. It restricts their rights and forces them to follow government preferences over their own. Only a child would buy the socialist propaganda and believe that violating people's human rights by punishing those who don't abide by some intrusive mandate, is "protecting" them. >Fact: on the basis of influence, there is no socialist or pro-cooperative-ownership analog to Mises or Manhattan Institute nor to any one of the dozens of pro-market / libertarian think tanks cranking out "science" that always finds in favor of capitalist boardrooms. How delusional you are. There are a ton of statist and/or left wing think tanks and public policy research institutions. The Economic Policy Institute, the Center for American Progress, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities are a few of many organizations that promote highly anti-libertarian policies. The Hamilton Project, heavily funded by banks, supports a government backed central banking cartel that violates essential rights to free exchange, and numerous leftist programs designed to buy votes. Massively funded academic institutions lean heavily leftist as well.
m3talsmith 10y ago
Mises is one of the core Libertarian sites for economic theory.

FrostyElsa 10y ago

those are the same arguments capitalists have been using against communists/socialists for almost a century: "muh business solves everything" It doesn't. Radical income inequality causes poverty. The rich are stingy and hold onto their money like rats. To alleviate poverty it must be stripped from them and given to those who can put money back into the system (poor, working, middle classes).

lightbyte 10y ago

What a mess. >"The progressive taxation that is necessary to finance a UBI means that the more a person earns, the higher percentage of their wealth will be taken from them. The work disincentives are therefore still very much present in the tax system." I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise. >"The struggling entrepreneurs and artists mentioned earlier are struggling for a reason. For whatever reason, the market has deemed the goods they are providing to be insufficiently valuable. Their work simply isn’t productive according to those who would potentially consume the goods or services in question." What a huge leap to make from struggling to struggling because nobody wants to buy their product. They could easily be struggling purely because they left their old job to pursue this and now have no steady income. The article even suggests this initially, so I have no idea how they just ignored it. >"The universal basic income, however, allows them to continue their less-valued endeavors with the money of those who have actually produced value, which gets to the ultimate problem of all government welfare programs." Not everything needs to be about generating more wealth for yourself. This article also completely ignored the idea that eventually there just aren't going to be any jobs left for the vast majority of people to take. What do we do then? The UBI is the solution to that. I wonder why they did not discuss that: >"Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order." Oh, that's why. This is just about generating wealth and screwing over everyone in the process for them

nodule15 10y ago
>I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise. False. Capital gains rate, many tax credits phased out, etc.
geebee 10y ago
"There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise." I'm not sure if that's true, but I think the real issue is the loss of government support, particularly in terms of direct welfare. For instance, going up in salary by $10k a year wouldn't result in a lower paycheck due to taxes, but it might result in a loss of government supported child care, and might disqualify a family from government subsidized housing, either in direct benefits or access to a required set aside of "below market rents" (common in SF). Because those benefits may be worth well over 10k a year, you might experience a net loss by working. As a result, even if the tax rate is progressive, there is a transitional period for relatively low income people where the marginal "tax", if you include the loss of subsidies, is 100% or higher. As a result, there could be a powerful disincentive to work. I think this is part of the appeal of the UBI - it's "universal". Everyone gets it. You get your money regardless of whether you work. Yes, that could deter people from working, since they already get their money. But it might also encourage people to work more, since they will no longer lose those benefits at low salary levels that make working a losing proposition relative to direct government welfare.

k_lander 10y ago

My only qualm with UBI is that it needs to be Universal in the non-discriminating sense. I don't see how that could perform better than a system that at least attempts to discriminate between good and bad actors. Not to underestimate the difficulty of that task, but I feel as long as we are testing out Unconditional BI in the real world, which is great - we shouldn't miss out on experimenting with Conditional Basic Income as well. Even if you do not manage to catch all the bad actors, it could still be worthwhile improvement over otherwise. The good folks at Ethereum and other crypto based decentralized platforms have been working on useful tools like decentralized identity, smart contracts, tokens that can hopefully make this practical.

tdb7893 10y ago
The point is that if everyone is equal you can't have "bad actors" without explicit fraud. I'm not sure what a bad actor is in the context of UBI