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I'm currently writing a list of things to consider when creating a UBI scheme (concerns that I often don't see addressed), and this is an easy way to illustrate

I'm currently writing a list of things to consider when creating a UBI scheme (concerns that I often don't see addressed), and this is an easy way to illustrate one of them. One simple way to implement "single payer" healthcare in the US would be to slowly expand the medicare (US program for people 65 and older) coverage by moving the age lower every year. Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year. But precisely the opposite is happening. Per the article: > In 2010, British women got their state pension at 60 and men got theirs at 65. By October 2020, both sexes will have to wait until they are 66. By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this?

rileymat2 10y ago
"Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year." I suspect when many (not all) of the supporters of UBI consider it to be the most basic of subsistence payments, not something we would want seniors to retire with. Think of the difference in amounts between SS and unemployment insurance currently.
- pharrlax 10y ago
  Then couple the lowering of the retirement age with a lowering of the amount paid out in the early years of retirement, gradually plateauing down to a base UBI level for 40-somethings and increasing to plateau out to a social-security level for 60-somethings.
- peteretep 10y ago
  > the most basic of subsistence > payments, not something we would > want seniors to retire with The full UK pension is £119.30 per week, unemployment benefit (JSA) is: £73.10.
  - exclusiv 10y ago
    Wow that's nothing. We have state government workers in California getting 90% of their highest salary as long as they live. And some even double dip.
    - peteretep 10y ago
      State pension is not the same as the Civil Service pension, which would be equivalent to what you're talking about, and can be very good indeed.
- meditationapp 10y ago
  Well a) SS is barely livable and b) unemployment insurance would actually be a much better proposition if people paid into it.
visarga 10y ago
> By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. They could just set the age at 80 and be done with it. Funding problem solved! /s
TillE 10y ago
UBI is very simple if you allow the state to acquire capital and cultivate it in a sovereign wealth fund. Imagine, for example, public ownership of 50% of the most valuable real estate in the country, which is then rented as usual. You don't need sky-high taxes when there's income from capital to distribute.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Using taxes to crowd out investment markets...can't go wrong there.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    In Norway, apart from the well known sovereign investment fund investing abroad, the state also owns shares equivalent to about 1/3 of the total value of all companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. I'm sure you can go wrong there, but it clearly is also possible not to, as this model has worked quite well so far.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    At least a state investment fund is in for the long term. This is better for the company than a bunch of short-term hedge funds which only seek to bleed the company dry.
losteric 10y ago
Taxes, with preferably much more progressive rates. The pension age depends on the number of people of working age and their tax rate. Population growth is slowing down, so the options are to increase taxes or the retirement age.
- betaby 10y ago
  And not even try to think to tax business! Tax constantly shrinking in % working population. /s
marcosdumay 10y ago
UBI is a redistribution expense, that means, the government takes taxes from richer people, and distribute it to everybody. Retirement is an entitlement pyramid, that means, people pay the government for it to take care of older participants, and by doing so they get entitled into receiving something in proportion to what they paid. Besides it being a pyramid, a UBI scheme where total received is proportional to total paid wouldn't work either. Yet, none of that means that UBI wouldn't work, those are completely different.
- tanderson92 10y ago
  > Retirement is an entitlement pyramid, that means, people pay the government for it to take care of older participants This is news to those who retire and live on investment income.
  - dmoy 10y ago
    In the US at least, almost half of elderly would be living in poverty but for social security. Most are not retiring and living off of investment income.
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      That does not detract from the truthfulness of my statement.
  - jhallenworld 10y ago
    Investment income depends on a functioning, growing economy. Even just maintaining stored retirement wealth depends on this. Think about prices for services when there are large numbers of rich retired people with needs, but few young people willing to provide them.
    - pm90 10y ago
      The answer, of course, is automation. Granted, a ton of thing may just not be possible with robots. But I expect that, just like Oil was the resource that boosted humanity, AI (and modern medicine) will be the resource that comes to aid the elderly as demographics rapidly change.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 10y ago
> How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this? You have to address the revenue to pay for it, which in most places means ending preferential tax treatment of capital income. Right now, pretty much the whole world has, at any income level, heavier taxation of labor than capital (in the US, higher direct taxes coupled with employer mandates that act as additional taxes; as well as addressing direct taxes those mandates need replaced with public social programs so they aren't burdens on employing labor.)
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  Even here in the supposedly socialist paradise of Norway capital gains are more lightly taxed than earnings. My marginal tax rate on earnings is 50% but interest or income from mutual funds is taxed at 27%. At least it was last time I looked, not much I can do about either of those numbers so I don't think about them any more.
  - pm90 10y ago
    This is probably wayy off topic, but not having met real life earning Norwegians (traveling students don't count): how does it feel to be giving away half of what you earn to the government? I'm trying to phrase this question as blandly as possible; don't mean to be snarky or anything. My own political philosophy has been migrating from something far-right to more center, but this is one issue that does bother me very much...Specifically, the feeling I have is: I worked pretty damn hard to get to a situation where I can make the kind of money I make now, and almost 20% goes away in taxes to the US federal govt. (not including Social Security and Medicare). I was born into a poor family so it seems rather egregious that my hard work, my blood and sweat is ultimately to be used for the benefit of people who are not, well, me.
    - avenius 10y ago
      Answering as a fellow Norwegian: I gladly pay my taxes - the beneficiaries of these taxes are the community as a whole, including myself. I don't have to worry about going bankrupt if I ever get any serious health issues, for instance. There's also the issue of social security, which not everyone is a fan of. But giving people a decent economic baseline / safety net should mean they e.g. won't have to resort to crime to stay afloat. It may also reduce tensions, although I can't say that for sure (some of my old friends get social security, and they're feeling disenfranchised due to a lack of real opportunities). I get the impression that some people think that taxation is basically money being stolen from them and being given to someone else - isn't that a somewhat gross misunderstanding?
aianus 10y ago
> Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year Why would you first give UBI to the richest people (old people at the peak of their careers with a lifetime of savings)? Sounds backwards to me.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  You'd give UBI to those least able to work and generate an income.
  - aianus 10y ago
    They don't need an income; they have paid-off houses worth $1.2m that they picked up in 1972 for $100k.
    - cbanek 10y ago
      But now who can buy that house for $1.2m, and in 30 years will it have increased in value by 10x again? I feel like this is why an increasing number of people are locked out of the housing market. But as we learned, prices don't increase forever...
      - costcopizza 10y ago
        Not sure why this was downvoted.
      - tostitos1979 10y ago
        >who can but the houses? Rich people from other countries. Especially places where money isn't made cleanly?
    - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
      This is a gross generalization. Not everyone was a solidly middle class worker for their entire lifetime, and not everyone thought to save for retirement. Before you studied it, did you have any idea at all how expensive retirement would be? Think about it: If someone didn't save their whole life because they assumed social security would provide for a good life, but then they discover that SS hasn't been increasing much at all and the quality of life SS provides is terrible, what are they supposed to do? Suffer? Just because a portion of their generation saved?
VLM 10y ago
If you're asking how to fund it in a non-redistributive manner, since the blood has been squeezed from the stone: We have a peculiar set of beneficiaries of our economic inflation system. In theory we could select poor people as the winners of economic inflation. In practice it would result in a civil war because the current wealthy and powerful beneficiaries of the existing inflation based economic system won't accept being cut off from funds very easily. In the long run they have to be very careful about grabbing pennies in front of a steamroller because if they aren't careful the guillotines will come out. Demographic changes are relevant. Table #4 implies the percentage of white school children in the UK will be zero in 70 years based on growth rates being linear at 10%/decade and 30% minority today. There is no such thing as magic dirt, and once whites are eliminated from the UK, the landmass will no have "white country" style retirement systems because it'll no longer be a white country. The Rhodesian retirement system is no longer a relevant topic of discussion today in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe does have a retirement system, but no one would confuse it with the soon to be historical UK retirement system. A child in the UK will not be retiring in either the UK or Rhodesian retirement system because the UK of 2010s will not exist in the 2080s, more will be changing than just the retirement system. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/552342/SFR20_2016_Main_Text.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
- germinalphrase 10y ago
  Your suggesting that white people in the UK are simply going to stop having children? Or, that in 70 years there simply will be no white people left in the UK? I'm feel pretty confident that the chart doesn't suggest what you're saying - but then, I'm not entirely sure what exactly you're saying.
  - VLM 10y ago
    Demographics are destiny and if the population of a country is replaced, then it seems a tautology that the new country will resemble the replacements rather than the replaced in many ways. I wasn't being facetious that there is in fact a retirement program in Zimbabwe, and listening to Rhodesians in the 1950s talking about their Rhodesian retirement plan for the then very distant 2010s is likely to be as pointless of a discussion. The "why" and who's behind it is I'm sure a fascinating off topic discussion but the UK government's own rather linear chart of % non-UK school children vs year the data was gathered has certain implications, if the linear trend continues.
spangry 10y ago
The biggest problem, one where the trend is running in the wrong direction, is how to fund UBI. If we assume that labour will be increasingly replaced by capital in the future, then I think this ultimately comes down to the following question: how do we tax increasingly mobile capital? I'm reposting here, but it seems particularly relevant. Because of the relative (and increasing) mobility of capital, countries have incentive to undercut each others' taxes on capital, to attract that capital into their country. There seem to be two directions we can go in: 1) Give up on corporate tax and shift the tax burden on to less mobile bases (e.g. land, consumption). This scenario seems to be slowly playing out across the developed world. I'm not sure this could fund UBI, and does little to mitigate the negative effects of capital accumulating in fewer and fewer hands. 2) Engineer some kind of grand international agreement on corporate tax rates: a 'Bretton Woods areement for corporate tax', if you will. This would be necessary because there's such a strong incentive for countries to 'undercut' each others' corporate tax rates (to attract foreign capital investment, tax havens being the extreme example of this). Such an agreement would require: a specific agreement on minimum corporate/capital tax rates, the participation of countries representing the bulk of the world's production output, and provisions that levy punitive tariffs on non-complying, and non-participating, countries that go below the minimum rate. I've long thought option 2 to be basically impossible. But I've begun to wonder about this. In a strange way, Trump's presidency might be the golden opportunity. He seems to be just the right amount of crazy to do it. I couldn't imagine an 'establishment' president going near something like this. And I think only the US could lead such a process, maybe with some quietly pre-agreed support from China. Given the capital flight China is currently plagued with, their precarious public finances and their main central banker publicly stating support for some kind of international agreement on capital controls (he explicitly invoked Bretton Woods), it seems like a few stars are aligning. I imagine the Chinese communist party is also acutely aware that if the music stops, their Bastille will get stormed. It's a tricky proposition though. It would have to be 'sold' skillfully. Essentially, we would need to convince the (marginally) most powerful in society (government) that they are about to be eclipsed by another group (capital owners). Perhaps our 'automated future' is the narrative to go with. Something like: As labour is replaced with algos/robots, then by definition production becomes more capital intensive. So more and more of the gains from production and trade accrue to a fairly small group of capital owners. It's conceivable that, in the not too distant future, some of these mega-corporations will have net incomes that rival that of even large, first-world governments. At this point, they will pose an existential threat to liberal democracy as they will have the means to overcome the will of the majority and even the most co-ordinated resistance (i.e. by employing a large 'private security force'). Not to mention the immense soft-power they will wield given they will control most of the world's means of production. So, although this may all sound crazy, it would be unwise and dangerous to allow things to reach a stage where liberal democracy is imperilled by this concentration of wealth. Therefore, we must tax corporations/capital in a way that leaves them nowhere to run (i.e. via an enforced international agreement on rates). A fair chunk of this revenue should be redistributed to (former) workers in the form of basic income in the interest of public welfare and social stability. It's good populist policy too, something that Trump seems well suited to selling (although he'll face significant opposition from those suckling on the corporate teat i.e. mostly everyone, including the 'mainstream' media). Note: I'm not really keen on emotive arguments like the above, but I think some version of the above is what it would take to sell a radical proposal like an international agreement on corporate tax rates to sustainably fund basic income. Although not exactly a 'glorious revolution', it probably beats the hell out of living in a world that has become a giant company town.
jacquesm 10y ago
> How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this? That's backwards. How do the people that run todays pension funds expect to own up to the fact that they've been technically bankrupt for quite a while? The only reason the pension age is pushed upwards is to mask the fact that the money in the funds required to fulfill their obligations simply isn't there. The easiest way to do that is to start paying out later, a number of folks that would have otherwise been eligible will simply die in the intermediary and those that don't will pay into the pot for a couple more years. UBI is a scheme that does not involve pension funds at all.
- rossriley 10y ago
  It's worth noting that the above doesn't relate to pension funds but the state pension. These aren't paid out from a pot but comes from general taxation, the same as presumably a UBI system would.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    State pensions are often paid out of a special pot, and not general government funds; in the US, for instance the Social Security Old Age and Survivors (OAS) Trust Fund.
    - chaostheory 10y ago
      Yes. The problem is that the government tends to take money out of that 'special pot' for general budget shortfalls. It doesn't help that projections for future pension payouts tend to be overly optimistic as well.
      - exclusiv 10y ago
        This and the fact that when state pensions were getting good returns - they setup guarantees which became liabilities of the state. However, when investments went the other way - the guarantees were still in place. So they get to have their cake and eat it too.
ed_balls 10y ago
>> In 2010, British women got their state pension at 60 and men got theirs at 65. By October 2020, both sexes will have to wait until they are 66. By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. >How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this? Because this was done to calm down the markets. The debt is approaching 100%.
dilemma 10y ago
How much is the monthly UBI in your plan?
empath75 10y ago
Ubi is going to depend on a mass uprising of the have nots vs the haves. But there is plenty of resources to go around. The problem is the wealth is concentrated in the hands of very few people.

rileymat2 10y ago

"Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year." I suspect when many (not all) of the supporters of UBI consider it to be the most basic of subsistence payments, not something we would want seniors to retire with. Think of the difference in amounts between SS and unemployment insurance currently.

pharrlax 10y ago
Then couple the lowering of the retirement age with a lowering of the amount paid out in the early years of retirement, gradually plateauing down to a base UBI level for 40-somethings and increasing to plateau out to a social-security level for 60-somethings.
peteretep 10y ago
> the most basic of subsistence > payments, not something we would > want seniors to retire with The full UK pension is £119.30 per week, unemployment benefit (JSA) is: £73.10.
- exclusiv 10y ago
  Wow that's nothing. We have state government workers in California getting 90% of their highest salary as long as they live. And some even double dip.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    State pension is not the same as the Civil Service pension, which would be equivalent to what you're talking about, and can be very good indeed.
meditationapp 10y ago
Well a) SS is barely livable and b) unemployment insurance would actually be a much better proposition if people paid into it.

visarga 10y ago

> By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. They could just set the age at 80 and be done with it. Funding problem solved! /s

TillE 10y ago

UBI is very simple if you allow the state to acquire capital and cultivate it in a sovereign wealth fund. Imagine, for example, public ownership of 50% of the most valuable real estate in the country, which is then rented as usual. You don't need sky-high taxes when there's income from capital to distribute.

paulddraper 10y ago
Using taxes to crowd out investment markets...can't go wrong there.
- vidarh 10y ago
  In Norway, apart from the well known sovereign investment fund investing abroad, the state also owns shares equivalent to about 1/3 of the total value of all companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. I'm sure you can go wrong there, but it clearly is also possible not to, as this model has worked quite well so far.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  At least a state investment fund is in for the long term. This is better for the company than a bunch of short-term hedge funds which only seek to bleed the company dry.

losteric 10y ago

Taxes, with preferably much more progressive rates. The pension age depends on the number of people of working age and their tax rate. Population growth is slowing down, so the options are to increase taxes or the retirement age.

betaby 10y ago
And not even try to think to tax business! Tax constantly shrinking in % working population. /s

marcosdumay 10y ago

UBI is a redistribution expense, that means, the government takes taxes from richer people, and distribute it to everybody. Retirement is an entitlement pyramid, that means, people pay the government for it to take care of older participants, and by doing so they get entitled into receiving something in proportion to what they paid. Besides it being a pyramid, a UBI scheme where total received is proportional to total paid wouldn't work either. Yet, none of that means that UBI wouldn't work, those are completely different.

tanderson92 10y ago
> Retirement is an entitlement pyramid, that means, people pay the government for it to take care of older participants This is news to those who retire and live on investment income.
- dmoy 10y ago
  In the US at least, almost half of elderly would be living in poverty but for social security. Most are not retiring and living off of investment income.
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    That does not detract from the truthfulness of my statement.
- jhallenworld 10y ago
  Investment income depends on a functioning, growing economy. Even just maintaining stored retirement wealth depends on this. Think about prices for services when there are large numbers of rich retired people with needs, but few young people willing to provide them.
  - pm90 10y ago
    The answer, of course, is automation. Granted, a ton of thing may just not be possible with robots. But I expect that, just like Oil was the resource that boosted humanity, AI (and modern medicine) will be the resource that comes to aid the elderly as demographics rapidly change.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 10y ago

> How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this? You have to address the revenue to pay for it, which in most places means ending preferential tax treatment of capital income. Right now, pretty much the whole world has, at any income level, heavier taxation of labor than capital (in the US, higher direct taxes coupled with employer mandates that act as additional taxes; as well as addressing direct taxes those mandates need replaced with public social programs so they aren't burdens on employing labor.)

kwhitefoot 10y ago
Even here in the supposedly socialist paradise of Norway capital gains are more lightly taxed than earnings. My marginal tax rate on earnings is 50% but interest or income from mutual funds is taxed at 27%. At least it was last time I looked, not much I can do about either of those numbers so I don't think about them any more.
- pm90 10y ago
  This is probably wayy off topic, but not having met real life earning Norwegians (traveling students don't count): how does it feel to be giving away half of what you earn to the government? I'm trying to phrase this question as blandly as possible; don't mean to be snarky or anything. My own political philosophy has been migrating from something far-right to more center, but this is one issue that does bother me very much...Specifically, the feeling I have is: I worked pretty damn hard to get to a situation where I can make the kind of money I make now, and almost 20% goes away in taxes to the US federal govt. (not including Social Security and Medicare). I was born into a poor family so it seems rather egregious that my hard work, my blood and sweat is ultimately to be used for the benefit of people who are not, well, me.
  - avenius 10y ago
    Answering as a fellow Norwegian: I gladly pay my taxes - the beneficiaries of these taxes are the community as a whole, including myself. I don't have to worry about going bankrupt if I ever get any serious health issues, for instance. There's also the issue of social security, which not everyone is a fan of. But giving people a decent economic baseline / safety net should mean they e.g. won't have to resort to crime to stay afloat. It may also reduce tensions, although I can't say that for sure (some of my old friends get social security, and they're feeling disenfranchised due to a lack of real opportunities). I get the impression that some people think that taxation is basically money being stolen from them and being given to someone else - isn't that a somewhat gross misunderstanding?

aianus 10y ago

> Very similarly, a simple way to incrementally implement UBI would be to lower the "retirement age" every year Why would you first give UBI to the richest people (old people at the peak of their careers with a lifetime of savings)? Sounds backwards to me.

paulddraper 10y ago
You'd give UBI to those least able to work and generate an income.
- aianus 10y ago
  They don't need an income; they have paid-off houses worth $1.2m that they picked up in 1972 for $100k.
  - cbanek 10y ago
    But now who can buy that house for $1.2m, and in 30 years will it have increased in value by 10x again? I feel like this is why an increasing number of people are locked out of the housing market. But as we learned, prices don't increase forever...
    - costcopizza 10y ago
      Not sure why this was downvoted.
    - tostitos1979 10y ago
      >who can but the houses? Rich people from other countries. Especially places where money isn't made cleanly?
  - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    This is a gross generalization. Not everyone was a solidly middle class worker for their entire lifetime, and not everyone thought to save for retirement. Before you studied it, did you have any idea at all how expensive retirement would be? Think about it: If someone didn't save their whole life because they assumed social security would provide for a good life, but then they discover that SS hasn't been increasing much at all and the quality of life SS provides is terrible, what are they supposed to do? Suffer? Just because a portion of their generation saved?

VLM 10y ago

If you're asking how to fund it in a non-redistributive manner, since the blood has been squeezed from the stone: We have a peculiar set of beneficiaries of our economic inflation system. In theory we could select poor people as the winners of economic inflation. In practice it would result in a civil war because the current wealthy and powerful beneficiaries of the existing inflation based economic system won't accept being cut off from funds very easily. In the long run they have to be very careful about grabbing pennies in front of a steamroller because if they aren't careful the guillotines will come out. Demographic changes are relevant. Table #4 implies the percentage of white school children in the UK will be zero in 70 years based on growth rates being linear at 10%/decade and 30% minority today. There is no such thing as magic dirt, and once whites are eliminated from the UK, the landmass will no have "white country" style retirement systems because it'll no longer be a white country. The Rhodesian retirement system is no longer a relevant topic of discussion today in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe does have a retirement system, but no one would confuse it with the soon to be historical UK retirement system. A child in the UK will not be retiring in either the UK or Rhodesian retirement system because the UK of 2010s will not exist in the 2080s, more will be changing than just the retirement system. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/552342/SFR20_2016_Main_Text.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

germinalphrase 10y ago
Your suggesting that white people in the UK are simply going to stop having children? Or, that in 70 years there simply will be no white people left in the UK? I'm feel pretty confident that the chart doesn't suggest what you're saying - but then, I'm not entirely sure what exactly you're saying.
- VLM 10y ago
  Demographics are destiny and if the population of a country is replaced, then it seems a tautology that the new country will resemble the replacements rather than the replaced in many ways. I wasn't being facetious that there is in fact a retirement program in Zimbabwe, and listening to Rhodesians in the 1950s talking about their Rhodesian retirement plan for the then very distant 2010s is likely to be as pointless of a discussion. The "why" and who's behind it is I'm sure a fascinating off topic discussion but the UK government's own rather linear chart of % non-UK school children vs year the data was gathered has certain implications, if the linear trend continues.

spangry 10y ago

The biggest problem, one where the trend is running in the wrong direction, is how to fund UBI. If we assume that labour will be increasingly replaced by capital in the future, then I think this ultimately comes down to the following question: how do we tax increasingly mobile capital? I'm reposting here, but it seems particularly relevant. Because of the relative (and increasing) mobility of capital, countries have incentive to undercut each others' taxes on capital, to attract that capital into their country. There seem to be two directions we can go in: 1) Give up on corporate tax and shift the tax burden on to less mobile bases (e.g. land, consumption). This scenario seems to be slowly playing out across the developed world. I'm not sure this could fund UBI, and does little to mitigate the negative effects of capital accumulating in fewer and fewer hands. 2) Engineer some kind of grand international agreement on corporate tax rates: a 'Bretton Woods areement for corporate tax', if you will. This would be necessary because there's such a strong incentive for countries to 'undercut' each others' corporate tax rates (to attract foreign capital investment, tax havens being the extreme example of this). Such an agreement would require: a specific agreement on minimum corporate/capital tax rates, the participation of countries representing the bulk of the world's production output, and provisions that levy punitive tariffs on non-complying, and non-participating, countries that go below the minimum rate. I've long thought option 2 to be basically impossible. But I've begun to wonder about this. In a strange way, Trump's presidency might be the golden opportunity. He seems to be just the right amount of crazy to do it. I couldn't imagine an 'establishment' president going near something like this. And I think only the US could lead such a process, maybe with some quietly pre-agreed support from China. Given the capital flight China is currently plagued with, their precarious public finances and their main central banker publicly stating support for some kind of international agreement on capital controls (he explicitly invoked Bretton Woods), it seems like a few stars are aligning. I imagine the Chinese communist party is also acutely aware that if the music stops, their Bastille will get stormed. It's a tricky proposition though. It would have to be 'sold' skillfully. Essentially, we would need to convince the (marginally) most powerful in society (government) that they are about to be eclipsed by another group (capital owners). Perhaps our 'automated future' is the narrative to go with. Something like: As labour is replaced with algos/robots, then by definition production becomes more capital intensive. So more and more of the gains from production and trade accrue to a fairly small group of capital owners. It's conceivable that, in the not too distant future, some of these mega-corporations will have net incomes that rival that of even large, first-world governments. At this point, they will pose an existential threat to liberal democracy as they will have the means to overcome the will of the majority and even the most co-ordinated resistance (i.e. by employing a large 'private security force'). Not to mention the immense soft-power they will wield given they will control most of the world's means of production. So, although this may all sound crazy, it would be unwise and dangerous to allow things to reach a stage where liberal democracy is imperilled by this concentration of wealth. Therefore, we must tax corporations/capital in a way that leaves them nowhere to run (i.e. via an enforced international agreement on rates). A fair chunk of this revenue should be redistributed to (former) workers in the form of basic income in the interest of public welfare and social stability. It's good populist policy too, something that Trump seems well suited to selling (although he'll face significant opposition from those suckling on the corporate teat i.e. mostly everyone, including the 'mainstream' media). Note: I'm not really keen on emotive arguments like the above, but I think some version of the above is what it would take to sell a radical proposal like an international agreement on corporate tax rates to sustainably fund basic income. Although not exactly a 'glorious revolution', it probably beats the hell out of living in a world that has become a giant company town.

jacquesm 10y ago

> How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this? That's backwards. How do the people that run todays pension funds expect to own up to the fact that they've been technically bankrupt for quite a while? The only reason the pension age is pushed upwards is to mask the fact that the money in the funds required to fulfill their obligations simply isn't there. The easiest way to do that is to start paying out later, a number of folks that would have otherwise been eligible will simply die in the intermediary and those that don't will pay into the pot for a couple more years. UBI is a scheme that does not involve pension funds at all.

rossriley 10y ago
It's worth noting that the above doesn't relate to pension funds but the state pension. These aren't paid out from a pot but comes from general taxation, the same as presumably a UBI system would.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  State pensions are often paid out of a special pot, and not general government funds; in the US, for instance the Social Security Old Age and Survivors (OAS) Trust Fund.
  - chaostheory 10y ago
    Yes. The problem is that the government tends to take money out of that 'special pot' for general budget shortfalls. It doesn't help that projections for future pension payouts tend to be overly optimistic as well.
    - exclusiv 10y ago
      This and the fact that when state pensions were getting good returns - they setup guarantees which became liabilities of the state. However, when investments went the other way - the guarantees were still in place. So they get to have their cake and eat it too.

ed_balls 10y ago

>> In 2010, British women got their state pension at 60 and men got theirs at 65. By October 2020, both sexes will have to wait until they are 66. By 2028, the age will rise again, to 67. >How do people who think a feasible UBI future is possible square with this? Because this was done to calm down the markets. The debt is approaching 100%.

dilemma 10y ago

How much is the monthly UBI in your plan?

empath75 10y ago

Ubi is going to depend on a mass uprising of the have nots vs the haves. But there is plenty of resources to go around. The problem is the wealth is concentrated in the hands of very few people.