8 ms·

After Universal Basic Income, the Flood

57 points by simonsarris 9y ago

peshkatari 9y ago
Wrong on many levels. Just plain wrong assumptions.
HisGraceTheDuck 9y ago
Until I read this I was more or less pro-UBI but this article makes some excellent points. UBI essentially assumes that everyone is a rational actor and that they will not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things (drugs, alcohol, gambling, excessively expensive consumables, etc). This is demonstrably false, especially if individuals don't have a day job. On an individual level it's easy to say that people should be responsible for their own wellbeing. But as a matter of public policy, it's just plain bad policy. It's also hard to see how that money would /not/ be extracted in the form of higher prices across the board. And the main point of the article is a very good one: what happens to all the now-unskilled labour?
- tmnvix 9y ago
  > UBI essentially assumes that everyone is a rational actor and that they will not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things (drugs, alcohol, gambling, excessively expensive consumables, etc). This is demonstrably false, especially if individuals don't have a day job. Most people that collect social welfare payments in Australia and New Zealand don't do this - they are frugal with what they get and are careful to pay for their essentials first. Those that aren't able to budget like this are often offered help in the form of budgeting advice and planning. Sometimes they will find themselves in a situation where they receive the payment they are entitled to, minus the cost of their rent - which is paid directly to their accommodation provider (often the government). Beyond this, the number of people that don't benefit from their welfare payments because they fritter them away is vanishingly small. BTW, here in NZ we do actually have a UBI, it's available to everyone regardless of income. The only condition is you have to be of retirement age. Unsurprisingly, it is very, very popular and nobody ever brings up the kind of objections to it that you have here with regard to UBI.
  - diggernet 9y ago
    I wonder how many UBI proponents here would be willing to adopt your immigration rules, which go a long way toward making your system work as well as it does.
    - tmnvix 9y ago
      I'm not exactly sure which rules you are referring to, but if you are alluding to Australia and New Zealand being difficult to emigrate to, I would just point out their respective population growth rates relative to the US (this growth is not due to natural increase - it is immigration that is driving it). https://www.google.co.nz/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_grow&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:AUS:NZL:USA&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false https://www.google.co.nz/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9...
      - diggernet 9y ago
        I am referring to the points system and income requirements, which give priority to people who are young, healthy, well educated, in demand, and/or wealthy. This ensures that most who are approved will provide substantial funding into the system before needing to draw from the system. As a result, the immigration-driven population growth you point to actually helps support the system.
  - neilwilson 9y ago
    That condition is important though. Have you ever wondered why the retirement age keeps going up despite there being a constant shortage of work? That's because society will only grant you a certain number of years off in return for the years you spent on the job. So retirement is just deferred wages. That's a different concept to getting paid for nothing all the time.
    - 9y ago
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  And yet another case of "the poor have no morals or responsibility, and deserve terrible they get" - no matter that evidence / research doesn't show this. And in fact shows the opposite.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    How is the comment saying anything about the poor? If I got UBI I would instantly quit my well-paid job and just slack off all day long. It has nothing to do with being poor or not.
    - tmnvix 9y ago
      My guess is you might do this for a month or two, but eventually you will get bored and end up doing something productive. How many people with substantial inherited wealth just slack off?
    - mrob 9y ago
      Why instantly quit? UBI gives you more negotiation leverage because the consequences of being fired are much less severe. You could probably negotiate better working conditions or fewer hours in exchange for less pay. There's a whole range of possibilities between low pay, maximum freedom (nothing but UBI), and high pay, low freedom (continuing to work as before). That's one big advantage of UBI over other benefits schemes: there are no breakpoints where working makes you worse off.
  - nilved 9y ago
    To the contrary, nobody has any morals or responsibility. Dial back the victim complex.
- js8 9y ago
  > they will not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things Actually, they can, there is no problem. Somebody still has to produce these things, and they have to pay them. So naturally, cost of these things is bounded from below by their supply. As someone noted, you can look at rich people who don't have to work, they mostly don't do that. Also, from ecological perspective it would better for people to spend most of the money on alcohol rather than say travel, because the ecological impact of drinking is much smaller. It's in fact interesting, because we tend to see unproductive things as bad, but they often have smaller ecological impact. > It's also hard to see how that money would /not/ be extracted in the form of higher prices across the board. Yes, the price of the labor would be higher, but that is the whole point. Although the best I think would be to tie the UBI to %HDP or income taxation, so that even if more is given to the productive people, the same portion is again returned to everybody at some point. People get this intuitively wrong, because they don't understand that in basic money equation, there is also velocity of money. The UBI in fact artificially increases the velocity, by redistribution of money at many points in economy to everybody, forcing another redistribution from everybody to production. > what happens to all the now-unskilled labour? Why don't you ask this today in the context of disabled people, or retired people? It's really nothing to freak about.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    >>The UBI in fact artificially increases the velocity, by redistribution of money at many points in economy to everybody, forcing another redistribution from everybody to production. Increasing the velocity of money without increasing production just leads to devaluation: MV = PY Where M is money supply, V is velocity of money, P is nominal prices, and Y is the real value of production So P = MV/Y. Increasing M or V increases P. You don't get more stuff just by moving money around faster. And production will decrease with higher welfare spending, so you'll have less per capita GDP/consumption/quality-of-life. Producers receive less per hour worked because now a portion of their production has to be given to other parties who are not contributing production in exchange. Imagine if all the non producers got zero dollars. Now the money the producers earn could be traded for goods other producers are producing, letting the producers consume more goods. Production is not an unlimited resource that can just be increased by increasing some party's consumption level. Increasing one group's consumption through income redistribution comes at the expense of lower consumption for another group.
- neilwilson 9y ago
  If you have to work for money you value it in terms of the work expended. So you will only let it go when you can exchange it for sufficient value. Exchanging money for insufficient value is what causes inflation. Which then leads to the idea that the idle rich can cause inflation because they have a reduced sense of value to the poor. If we are to share the same currency we have to have a similar sense of what it is worth in exchange. Spending eight hours doing something in exchange for 80 dollars gives you a very good idea what those dollars need to be worth. Work is actually what we do with our day to get a sense of value. If you expect somebody else to give up their day to produce stuff for you then you have to respond in kind or they'll stop doing it. The reason we resent the idle rich is that they expect something but add nothing of actual value back in return. So it would be with anybody receiving free money. It would be seen as the theft it is.
  - c22 9y ago
    I think many people mistake "going to work" with "adding something of value to society". From my observations not all jobs equally or directly benefit us all and some have a marked negative impact on society.
narak 9y ago
I'm curious why UBI has become popular over Milton Friedman's negative income tax. It seems to avoid a lot of the lack of incentive and cost issues.
- flukus 9y ago
  Negative income tax is just a more complicated form of the same thing. Part of the UBI appeal is easy administration.
- krfsm 9y ago
  UBI will work even in an environment where many people have no marketable skills, while negative income tax would just be the state sponsoring activities with no real value. We're not there yet, but the odds of ending up there sooner or later is very high. (Negative income tax could still be good if the activities themselves have a positive social value.)
rapsey 9y ago
My pessimistic conspiracy theory is UBI is just a carrot on a stick to keep people pacified. Humanity does not take the high road on a global scale. A war is likelier and the excess humanity will be killed off.
- s_kilk 9y ago
  This sounds like the kind of thing the average 17-year-old edgelord comes out with, completely devoid of content.
- ShabbosGoy 9y ago
  What you'll see is the further stratification of society into a permanent underclass that's unemployed while the super rich can become immortal due to the latest in cybernetics.
- js8 9y ago
  That's a conspiracy theory, indeed. If you want to prepare a war, you don't want "pacified" population. I can imagine somebody combining UBI with some sort of fascism, just like leninism did it with marxism, but by itself.. I don't see how alone it could be misused.
  - rapsey 9y ago
    I think the political climate is getting more heated up with every passing year. The right/left rift is large and getting larger. In the US and EU. If it keeps getting worse like it has been, a (civil) war is a distinct possibility 5-10 years down the line.
ajuc 9y ago
The problem I have with UBI is - I lived in a country that had something very similar - communist Poland. I've seen it personally - when you get money no matter if you do anything - A LOT of people just won't. They will happily consume what little they have and focus on other things. You could go to jail for not working in these times, so people pretended to work, but they weren't really working. Efficiency was awful. One example - my country is one of the top food exporters in EU. 27 years ago we had food shortages and rationing system for many goods. Exports grew over 20 times. GDP grew around 10 times. That's the difference in output I'm talking about. And countries where they had full collectivization were even worse. We had "communism lite". Admittedly there are differences between communism and UBI - the system was forced by USSR and they also did some very unpopular things (like persecuting people for religion, murdering WW2-era heroes, beating students and falsifying elections). Also - the chances to make any proper career were very small without at least some participation in the regime - for example signing "I will spy on my colleagues", giving bribes (not money, money were worthless, but favours), etc. So compared to capitalism the positive reinforcement to working was much weaker, and negative reinforcement wasn't there. With UBI negative reinforcement also disappears but positive reinforcement stays there. Maybe it will suffice. I don't think so.
- gambiting 9y ago
  Heh, as a Polish person, I would argue that you can see it happening right now in Poland too - last year, after implementation of the 500+ program(where basically the government gives 500pln for every child/month, except the first unless the family has almost no other income), I know company owners who have lost majority of their employees literally the day the program went live - with the most common argument being "I make about ~2000PLN/month, and have 3-4 children, if I stop working all of them will qualify for the 500+ program and I will have the same amount of money without working at all - so why would I?". I believe the exact same thing would happen with UBI - a lot of people would just stop working because....well, why would they not? And yes, I do like the argument that maybe some people just shouldn't work, there is no need to do stupid manual labour just to survive, but at the same time - I suspect Poland will feel the economic hit of this decision for decades to come, especially since we're not a rich country and can't offset both the financial and economical results of a) paying for it b) losing so many workers.
docdeek 9y ago
Nice article. The most interesting point is the question posed for proponents of UBI: what do you do if it doesn’t work out as planned? Extending that, if it turns out UBI is a bad idea, how do you get out of it? One thing that governments find hard to do is take back something that they have started giving away to people. It seems to me that, despite the obvious challenges, it is going to be far easier to launch UBI than it would be to close it down and move onto something else. If anyone knows of a UBI supporter that has explained how to ‘exit’ UBI if it isn’t working, I’d be interested in the link.
- tromp 9y ago
  You could introduce it gradually. First it's only available to those of age 65+, then one year later, if all goes well, it becomes available at age 64, etc. When it turns out a bad idea, you similarly roll it back, one year at a time.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    You mean make UBI start as an actual state pension not tired to years worked?
  - RestlessMind 9y ago
    Then most of the advanced countries already have this sort of system in terms of pensions or social security in the US. And based on discussions around strengthening social security, the solutions which are politically feasible seem to revolve around: increasing retirement age, reducing the benefits (by limiting COLAs), increasing taxes (by removing caps on salaries subject to SS taxes). Any final proposal to improve SS budgets would be a combination of all three, but I don't see reducing retirement age on the table. So how would your proposal work in this political climate?
ageek123 9y ago
I think many of the UBI supporters know "UBI will replace all the existing welfare programs" is just a sales pitch, and not actually what will happen. For the reasons mentions in this article, UBI will end up being in addition to existing welfare programs, not instead of them. This deceit allows supporters to claim it won't be astronomically expensive, and then once it has become policy and it turns out people aren't using the money on necessities, they will say "oh, I guess we need to keep all the other programs too!" Thus achieving their actual goal of massively growing the welfare state. UBI is fundamentally about ratcheting up redistribution, not ensuring that people's necessities are met. Programs for the latter will continue to be necessary.
- jahnu 9y ago
  > I think many of the UBI supporters know A supposition. Fine. Opinion is ok although supporting evidence would be nice. > UBI is fundamentally about ratcheting up redistribution, not ensuring that people's necessities are met Declaration of fact without supporting evidence. An argument based on an unsupported opinion.
  - mcbruiser3 9y ago
    common sense requires no supporting evidence.
shams93 9y ago
UBI has to be extremely aggressive to be effective. We're going to have to stop wasting resources on wars and militaries. With the obscene amount spent on the US military to maintain an empire could we instead give every US citizen a 100k income? Not once the dust has settled, we're in debt for generations and looking at 70-80% income tax on the small amount of people left working not to provide income for those pushed out of the economy but to provide income fr the rentier class who pay hardly or no taxes and live off the labor of others.
youdontknowtho 9y ago
UBI without a basic safety net for health care is a non-starter. It's not a substitute for a welfare state. Without it you are on an ever escalating probability curve towards destabilization. As for people not "being productive" with their UBI...I hate to break to everyone but the vast majority of people involved in corporate America are not productive at all. There is more make work and duplication and accountability avoidance built-in to corporate life to protect people's income than people involved in valley startups could possibly understand. Because the stakes are so high around unemployment, accountability becomes a very dangerous proposition. Projects are designed to put potentially career ending actions on consultants or outside parties that assume that responsibility as part of implementation contracts. It's crazy. If there was a UBI and social safety net that allowed people to pursue interests and not force them to take jobs that they dislike and cling to for dear life...everyone will be better, and I promise the people motivated to perform will still be performing, they just won't have people in the way that don't want to be there. It will also stop hiding the cost of getting high performance employees. People won't have to take employment to survive.
jondubois 9y ago
I don't think rent prices would be such a problem if UBI was introduced. Right now a lot of people are essentially forced to live in big cities because they can't find a job elsewhere and they need the money desperately. This drives up rent prices in the cities. If you give everyone just enough money to survive, it will encourage people to move back to the suburbs where rent is cheaper. They might have a hard time finding a job there initially but they may have the opportunity to start their own small businesses instead - This would be a boost to suburban economies. Regarding the argument about some people wasting their UBI. I think that's fine. We're not looking for equality so much as we're looking for fairness. If someone gambles away their UBI every month, at least that money will be put into circulation and provide work to other people who are not wasteful. UBI is about giving people breathing space to make decisions in their lives instead of being forced to follow the line of breadcrumbs that corporations have left behind.
- eesmith 9y ago
  Rent is cheaper in the suburbs, yes, but suburbs have their own costs. For example, you may need to use a car to go places, and car ownership is not cheap. Various sites (http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/city-or-suburbs-where-can-you-afford-to-live/ http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/city-or-suburbs-w... , https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/cost-of-living-in-city-vs-suburbs/ https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/cost-of-living-in-city-... , https://boomerandecho.com/living-in-the-city-vs-the-suburbs-pros-and-cons/ https://boomerandecho.com/living-in-the-city-vs-the-suburbs-... ) discuss how sometimes it's cheaper and sometimes it's more expensive to live in the suburbs. The first two point out other alternatives; the first, "many Canadians are opting for walkable communities that offer nearby shopping, work, transit and amenities. Known in city-planner speak as “complete neighbourhoods,” these walkable neighbourhoods can be found in both urban and suburban settings."; the secondm "you may find a lower cost of living in a small town.". Personally, I think UBI is more likely to support living in small towns than living in the suburbs. There are many small towns losing population because of people moving to the big cities to find work.
  - jondubois 9y ago
    I live in a big city now (London UK) and take the train to work. Transport costs me much more than owning a car back when I lived in a town; even if you factor in depreciation, petrol, insurance, traffic fines etc... It's incomparable. Every big city I've lived in (across many different countries) is similar in terms of transport costs so it's not just a UK thing. The cost of living in suburbs is nothing. Peanuts. When I was working remotely living in a mid size town in Australia I was able to save up a lot of money very quickly. I just can't do this in a big city.
ssimoni 9y ago
Small nit from article - "You don’t build a nuclear power plant (or even a dam) without a plan for what to do if it goes critical." Reactors going critical is a good thing. From wikipedia: When a reactor's neutron population remains steady from one generation to the next (creating as many new neutrons as are lost), the fission chain reaction is self-sustaining and the reactor's condition is referred to as "critical".
jarym 9y ago
UBI makes sense only if you’re able to ignore pretty much every economic theory except communism. One particular issue I have is the fiat nature of money: it’s meant to be printed to promote economic growth but it will usually reduce purchasing power. This is similar to the effect of dilution on stock. The article talked about price inflation bit the real issue with UBI is we finally remove any economic value that may be equated to money - it just becomes a piece of paper and it will likely lose value until it has none left.
- CuriousSkeptic 9y ago
  Try Georgism if you need an alternative theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
sologoub 9y ago
Reading the article, the author takes a lot of stabs at "hipsters" and makes "men just want to do drugs and watch TV" comment. So what? If we truly are moving to a society where labor as we have it today becomes unnecessary, leisure has to replace a portion of that. Note that 18-19 century landowning classes produced a lot of what we today would call negative behaviors (drugs, drinking, gambling, parties, etc), but the same classes also produced a lot of scientific and philosophical advances we take for granted today. A lot of these advances are possible because people could sit for hours musing on various topics without the need to produce something marketable immediately. If we can finance one more Newton or Einstein at the cost of hundreds of thousands spending their time watching TV, I'd say that's a worthy trade. Another issue here is that UBI can bring about a lot more investment of human capital into causes that do not produce marketable outputs, such as care for environment or fellow human being on a voluntary basis. This needs a culture/norm shift, but it is possible.
- sologoub 9y ago
  One of the unintended consequence that just occurred to me is trying to game the system with the number of children to secure the greatest total income. This could lead to unsustainable (not that we know if our current population size is sustainable) population growth/explosion. To combat such gaming, the UBI may need to phase out payments beyond replacement rate until they reach 18 or something like that.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    Your observation which just occurred to you has been a long-time bugbear of the conservative tabloid "Daily Mail" and at least some Tories. Here's an article combining the two: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364718/No-benefit-child-youre-dole-Tories-unveil-controversial-welfare-plan.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364718/No-benefit-c... . My view is that people don't want to simply maximize income, otherwise everyone would have two or three jobs and no free time. And taking care of children sometimes feels like having an extra job. I think the Daily Mail, etc. view comes from the idea that the poor are poor simply because they are a bad type of person, and not because of, say, structural inequalities or class oppression. Bear also in mind that those countries with a level high amount of social services (long paternity leave, free day care, subsidies for children, etc.) tend also to have low rates of childbirth. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#Coercive_population_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#Coercive_population... : > In many countries, the steady decline in birth rates over the past decades can be greatly attributed to the significant gains in women's freedoms, such as tackling the phenomenon of forced marriage and child marriage, education for women and increased socioeconomic opportunities. Women of all economic, social, religious and educational persuasions are choosing to have less children as they are gaining more control over their own reproductive rights. Apart from more children living into their adult years, women are often more ambitious to take up work, education and living their own lives rather than just a life of reproduction.[45] Birth rates in third world countries have fallen due to the introduction of family planning clinics.
ozy 9y ago
I am in favor of UBI, a few remarks: - mostly because people on the bottom can be powerless and get stuck in low paying jobs, no means to move, to re-educate, etc. - today most countries already redistribute money, in form of minimum wage, tax cuts, food stamps, disability benefits, heath insurance, etc. - UBI is a dial, you can turn it up, or turn it down, redistribute 15% of all value created is not unreasonable, some European countries are already at 10-15% - make sure every dollar earned, helps you move forward, benefits, UBI, taxation, should never have jumps in scales, but always be linear (this is horribly off in my country today) - drug misuse, poor that cannot handle money, is a problem today, and UBI won't solve it, it's not on the agenda to dump all social workers ... - lazy hipsters, that is intuitive but likely wrong, ... UBI is not exactly luxurious living, you'd want a job or no car, no nice clothes, no travelling, etc ...
mcbruiser3 9y ago
I am starting to suspect that a lot of the support for UBI is actually fake news, propagated by agents of Putin, or perhaps by people dumb enough to fall for fake news with a pro-communist ulterior motive.

57 points by simonsarris 9y ago

Wrong on many levels. Just plain wrong assumptions.

Until I read this I was more or less pro-UBI but this article makes some excellent points. UBI essentially assumes that everyone is a rational actor and that they will not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things (drugs, alcohol, gambling, excessively expensive consumables, etc). This is demonstrably false, especially if individuals don't have a day job. On an individual level it's easy to say that people should be responsible for their own wellbeing. But as a matter of public policy, it's just plain bad policy. It's also hard to see how that money would /not/ be extracted in the form of higher prices across the board. And the main point of the article is a very good one: what happens to all the now-unskilled labour?

tmnvix 9y ago
> UBI essentially assumes that everyone is a rational actor and that they will not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things (drugs, alcohol, gambling, excessively expensive consumables, etc). This is demonstrably false, especially if individuals don't have a day job. Most people that collect social welfare payments in Australia and New Zealand don't do this - they are frugal with what they get and are careful to pay for their essentials first. Those that aren't able to budget like this are often offered help in the form of budgeting advice and planning. Sometimes they will find themselves in a situation where they receive the payment they are entitled to, minus the cost of their rent - which is paid directly to their accommodation provider (often the government). Beyond this, the number of people that don't benefit from their welfare payments because they fritter them away is vanishingly small. BTW, here in NZ we do actually have a UBI, it's available to everyone regardless of income. The only condition is you have to be of retirement age. Unsurprisingly, it is very, very popular and nobody ever brings up the kind of objections to it that you have here with regard to UBI.
- diggernet 9y ago
  I wonder how many UBI proponents here would be willing to adopt your immigration rules, which go a long way toward making your system work as well as it does.
  - tmnvix 9y ago
    I'm not exactly sure which rules you are referring to, but if you are alluding to Australia and New Zealand being difficult to emigrate to, I would just point out their respective population growth rates relative to the US (this growth is not due to natural increase - it is immigration that is driving it). https://www.google.co.nz/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_grow&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:AUS:NZL:USA&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false https://www.google.co.nz/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9...
    - diggernet 9y ago
      I am referring to the points system and income requirements, which give priority to people who are young, healthy, well educated, in demand, and/or wealthy. This ensures that most who are approved will provide substantial funding into the system before needing to draw from the system. As a result, the immigration-driven population growth you point to actually helps support the system.
- neilwilson 9y ago
  That condition is important though. Have you ever wondered why the retirement age keeps going up despite there being a constant shortage of work? That's because society will only grant you a certain number of years off in return for the years you spent on the job. So retirement is just deferred wages. That's a different concept to getting paid for nothing all the time.
  - 9y ago
BoiledCabbage 9y ago
And yet another case of "the poor have no morals or responsibility, and deserve terrible they get" - no matter that evidence / research doesn't show this. And in fact shows the opposite.
- Kiro 9y ago
  How is the comment saying anything about the poor? If I got UBI I would instantly quit my well-paid job and just slack off all day long. It has nothing to do with being poor or not.
  - tmnvix 9y ago
    My guess is you might do this for a month or two, but eventually you will get bored and end up doing something productive. How many people with substantial inherited wealth just slack off?
  - mrob 9y ago
    Why instantly quit? UBI gives you more negotiation leverage because the consequences of being fired are much less severe. You could probably negotiate better working conditions or fewer hours in exchange for less pay. There's a whole range of possibilities between low pay, maximum freedom (nothing but UBI), and high pay, low freedom (continuing to work as before). That's one big advantage of UBI over other benefits schemes: there are no breakpoints where working makes you worse off.
- nilved 9y ago
  To the contrary, nobody has any morals or responsibility. Dial back the victim complex.
js8 9y ago
> they will not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things Actually, they can, there is no problem. Somebody still has to produce these things, and they have to pay them. So naturally, cost of these things is bounded from below by their supply. As someone noted, you can look at rich people who don't have to work, they mostly don't do that. Also, from ecological perspective it would better for people to spend most of the money on alcohol rather than say travel, because the ecological impact of drinking is much smaller. It's in fact interesting, because we tend to see unproductive things as bad, but they often have smaller ecological impact. > It's also hard to see how that money would /not/ be extracted in the form of higher prices across the board. Yes, the price of the labor would be higher, but that is the whole point. Although the best I think would be to tie the UBI to %HDP or income taxation, so that even if more is given to the productive people, the same portion is again returned to everybody at some point. People get this intuitively wrong, because they don't understand that in basic money equation, there is also velocity of money. The UBI in fact artificially increases the velocity, by redistribution of money at many points in economy to everybody, forcing another redistribution from everybody to production. > what happens to all the now-unskilled labour? Why don't you ask this today in the context of disabled people, or retired people? It's really nothing to freak about.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  >>The UBI in fact artificially increases the velocity, by redistribution of money at many points in economy to everybody, forcing another redistribution from everybody to production. Increasing the velocity of money without increasing production just leads to devaluation: MV = PY Where M is money supply, V is velocity of money, P is nominal prices, and Y is the real value of production So P = MV/Y. Increasing M or V increases P. You don't get more stuff just by moving money around faster. And production will decrease with higher welfare spending, so you'll have less per capita GDP/consumption/quality-of-life. Producers receive less per hour worked because now a portion of their production has to be given to other parties who are not contributing production in exchange. Imagine if all the non producers got zero dollars. Now the money the producers earn could be traded for goods other producers are producing, letting the producers consume more goods. Production is not an unlimited resource that can just be increased by increasing some party's consumption level. Increasing one group's consumption through income redistribution comes at the expense of lower consumption for another group.
neilwilson 9y ago
If you have to work for money you value it in terms of the work expended. So you will only let it go when you can exchange it for sufficient value. Exchanging money for insufficient value is what causes inflation. Which then leads to the idea that the idle rich can cause inflation because they have a reduced sense of value to the poor. If we are to share the same currency we have to have a similar sense of what it is worth in exchange. Spending eight hours doing something in exchange for 80 dollars gives you a very good idea what those dollars need to be worth. Work is actually what we do with our day to get a sense of value. If you expect somebody else to give up their day to produce stuff for you then you have to respond in kind or they'll stop doing it. The reason we resent the idle rich is that they expect something but add nothing of actual value back in return. So it would be with anybody receiving free money. It would be seen as the theft it is.
- c22 9y ago
  I think many people mistake "going to work" with "adding something of value to society". From my observations not all jobs equally or directly benefit us all and some have a marked negative impact on society.

narak 9y ago

I'm curious why UBI has become popular over Milton Friedman's negative income tax. It seems to avoid a lot of the lack of incentive and cost issues.

flukus 9y ago
Negative income tax is just a more complicated form of the same thing. Part of the UBI appeal is easy administration.
krfsm 9y ago
UBI will work even in an environment where many people have no marketable skills, while negative income tax would just be the state sponsoring activities with no real value. We're not there yet, but the odds of ending up there sooner or later is very high. (Negative income tax could still be good if the activities themselves have a positive social value.)

rapsey 9y ago

My pessimistic conspiracy theory is UBI is just a carrot on a stick to keep people pacified. Humanity does not take the high road on a global scale. A war is likelier and the excess humanity will be killed off.

s_kilk 9y ago
This sounds like the kind of thing the average 17-year-old edgelord comes out with, completely devoid of content.
ShabbosGoy 9y ago
What you'll see is the further stratification of society into a permanent underclass that's unemployed while the super rich can become immortal due to the latest in cybernetics.
js8 9y ago
That's a conspiracy theory, indeed. If you want to prepare a war, you don't want "pacified" population. I can imagine somebody combining UBI with some sort of fascism, just like leninism did it with marxism, but by itself.. I don't see how alone it could be misused.
- rapsey 9y ago
  I think the political climate is getting more heated up with every passing year. The right/left rift is large and getting larger. In the US and EU. If it keeps getting worse like it has been, a (civil) war is a distinct possibility 5-10 years down the line.

ajuc 9y ago

The problem I have with UBI is - I lived in a country that had something very similar - communist Poland. I've seen it personally - when you get money no matter if you do anything - A LOT of people just won't. They will happily consume what little they have and focus on other things. You could go to jail for not working in these times, so people pretended to work, but they weren't really working. Efficiency was awful. One example - my country is one of the top food exporters in EU. 27 years ago we had food shortages and rationing system for many goods. Exports grew over 20 times. GDP grew around 10 times. That's the difference in output I'm talking about. And countries where they had full collectivization were even worse. We had "communism lite". Admittedly there are differences between communism and UBI - the system was forced by USSR and they also did some very unpopular things (like persecuting people for religion, murdering WW2-era heroes, beating students and falsifying elections). Also - the chances to make any proper career were very small without at least some participation in the regime - for example signing "I will spy on my colleagues", giving bribes (not money, money were worthless, but favours), etc. So compared to capitalism the positive reinforcement to working was much weaker, and negative reinforcement wasn't there. With UBI negative reinforcement also disappears but positive reinforcement stays there. Maybe it will suffice. I don't think so.

gambiting 9y ago
Heh, as a Polish person, I would argue that you can see it happening right now in Poland too - last year, after implementation of the 500+ program(where basically the government gives 500pln for every child/month, except the first unless the family has almost no other income), I know company owners who have lost majority of their employees literally the day the program went live - with the most common argument being "I make about ~2000PLN/month, and have 3-4 children, if I stop working all of them will qualify for the 500+ program and I will have the same amount of money without working at all - so why would I?". I believe the exact same thing would happen with UBI - a lot of people would just stop working because....well, why would they not? And yes, I do like the argument that maybe some people just shouldn't work, there is no need to do stupid manual labour just to survive, but at the same time - I suspect Poland will feel the economic hit of this decision for decades to come, especially since we're not a rich country and can't offset both the financial and economical results of a) paying for it b) losing so many workers.

docdeek 9y ago

Nice article. The most interesting point is the question posed for proponents of UBI: what do you do if it doesn’t work out as planned? Extending that, if it turns out UBI is a bad idea, how do you get out of it? One thing that governments find hard to do is take back something that they have started giving away to people. It seems to me that, despite the obvious challenges, it is going to be far easier to launch UBI than it would be to close it down and move onto something else. If anyone knows of a UBI supporter that has explained how to ‘exit’ UBI if it isn’t working, I’d be interested in the link.

tromp 9y ago
You could introduce it gradually. First it's only available to those of age 65+, then one year later, if all goes well, it becomes available at age 64, etc. When it turns out a bad idea, you similarly roll it back, one year at a time.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  You mean make UBI start as an actual state pension not tired to years worked?
- RestlessMind 9y ago
  Then most of the advanced countries already have this sort of system in terms of pensions or social security in the US. And based on discussions around strengthening social security, the solutions which are politically feasible seem to revolve around: increasing retirement age, reducing the benefits (by limiting COLAs), increasing taxes (by removing caps on salaries subject to SS taxes). Any final proposal to improve SS budgets would be a combination of all three, but I don't see reducing retirement age on the table. So how would your proposal work in this political climate?

ageek123 9y ago

I think many of the UBI supporters know "UBI will replace all the existing welfare programs" is just a sales pitch, and not actually what will happen. For the reasons mentions in this article, UBI will end up being in addition to existing welfare programs, not instead of them. This deceit allows supporters to claim it won't be astronomically expensive, and then once it has become policy and it turns out people aren't using the money on necessities, they will say "oh, I guess we need to keep all the other programs too!" Thus achieving their actual goal of massively growing the welfare state. UBI is fundamentally about ratcheting up redistribution, not ensuring that people's necessities are met. Programs for the latter will continue to be necessary.

jahnu 9y ago
> I think many of the UBI supporters know A supposition. Fine. Opinion is ok although supporting evidence would be nice. > UBI is fundamentally about ratcheting up redistribution, not ensuring that people's necessities are met Declaration of fact without supporting evidence. An argument based on an unsupported opinion.
- mcbruiser3 9y ago
  common sense requires no supporting evidence.

shams93 9y ago

UBI has to be extremely aggressive to be effective. We're going to have to stop wasting resources on wars and militaries. With the obscene amount spent on the US military to maintain an empire could we instead give every US citizen a 100k income? Not once the dust has settled, we're in debt for generations and looking at 70-80% income tax on the small amount of people left working not to provide income for those pushed out of the economy but to provide income fr the rentier class who pay hardly or no taxes and live off the labor of others.

youdontknowtho 9y ago

UBI without a basic safety net for health care is a non-starter. It's not a substitute for a welfare state. Without it you are on an ever escalating probability curve towards destabilization. As for people not "being productive" with their UBI...I hate to break to everyone but the vast majority of people involved in corporate America are not productive at all. There is more make work and duplication and accountability avoidance built-in to corporate life to protect people's income than people involved in valley startups could possibly understand. Because the stakes are so high around unemployment, accountability becomes a very dangerous proposition. Projects are designed to put potentially career ending actions on consultants or outside parties that assume that responsibility as part of implementation contracts. It's crazy. If there was a UBI and social safety net that allowed people to pursue interests and not force them to take jobs that they dislike and cling to for dear life...everyone will be better, and I promise the people motivated to perform will still be performing, they just won't have people in the way that don't want to be there. It will also stop hiding the cost of getting high performance employees. People won't have to take employment to survive.

jondubois 9y ago

I don't think rent prices would be such a problem if UBI was introduced. Right now a lot of people are essentially forced to live in big cities because they can't find a job elsewhere and they need the money desperately. This drives up rent prices in the cities. If you give everyone just enough money to survive, it will encourage people to move back to the suburbs where rent is cheaper. They might have a hard time finding a job there initially but they may have the opportunity to start their own small businesses instead - This would be a boost to suburban economies. Regarding the argument about some people wasting their UBI. I think that's fine. We're not looking for equality so much as we're looking for fairness. If someone gambles away their UBI every month, at least that money will be put into circulation and provide work to other people who are not wasteful. UBI is about giving people breathing space to make decisions in their lives instead of being forced to follow the line of breadcrumbs that corporations have left behind.

eesmith 9y ago
Rent is cheaper in the suburbs, yes, but suburbs have their own costs. For example, you may need to use a car to go places, and car ownership is not cheap. Various sites (http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/city-or-suburbs-where-can-you-afford-to-live/ http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/city-or-suburbs-w... , https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/cost-of-living-in-city-vs-suburbs/ https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/cost-of-living-in-city-... , https://boomerandecho.com/living-in-the-city-vs-the-suburbs-pros-and-cons/ https://boomerandecho.com/living-in-the-city-vs-the-suburbs-... ) discuss how sometimes it's cheaper and sometimes it's more expensive to live in the suburbs. The first two point out other alternatives; the first, "many Canadians are opting for walkable communities that offer nearby shopping, work, transit and amenities. Known in city-planner speak as “complete neighbourhoods,” these walkable neighbourhoods can be found in both urban and suburban settings."; the secondm "you may find a lower cost of living in a small town.". Personally, I think UBI is more likely to support living in small towns than living in the suburbs. There are many small towns losing population because of people moving to the big cities to find work.
- jondubois 9y ago
  I live in a big city now (London UK) and take the train to work. Transport costs me much more than owning a car back when I lived in a town; even if you factor in depreciation, petrol, insurance, traffic fines etc... It's incomparable. Every big city I've lived in (across many different countries) is similar in terms of transport costs so it's not just a UK thing. The cost of living in suburbs is nothing. Peanuts. When I was working remotely living in a mid size town in Australia I was able to save up a lot of money very quickly. I just can't do this in a big city.

ssimoni 9y ago

Small nit from article - "You don’t build a nuclear power plant (or even a dam) without a plan for what to do if it goes critical." Reactors going critical is a good thing. From wikipedia: When a reactor's neutron population remains steady from one generation to the next (creating as many new neutrons as are lost), the fission chain reaction is self-sustaining and the reactor's condition is referred to as "critical".

jarym 9y ago

UBI makes sense only if you’re able to ignore pretty much every economic theory except communism. One particular issue I have is the fiat nature of money: it’s meant to be printed to promote economic growth but it will usually reduce purchasing power. This is similar to the effect of dilution on stock. The article talked about price inflation bit the real issue with UBI is we finally remove any economic value that may be equated to money - it just becomes a piece of paper and it will likely lose value until it has none left.

CuriousSkeptic 9y ago
Try Georgism if you need an alternative theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

sologoub 9y ago

Reading the article, the author takes a lot of stabs at "hipsters" and makes "men just want to do drugs and watch TV" comment. So what? If we truly are moving to a society where labor as we have it today becomes unnecessary, leisure has to replace a portion of that. Note that 18-19 century landowning classes produced a lot of what we today would call negative behaviors (drugs, drinking, gambling, parties, etc), but the same classes also produced a lot of scientific and philosophical advances we take for granted today. A lot of these advances are possible because people could sit for hours musing on various topics without the need to produce something marketable immediately. If we can finance one more Newton or Einstein at the cost of hundreds of thousands spending their time watching TV, I'd say that's a worthy trade. Another issue here is that UBI can bring about a lot more investment of human capital into causes that do not produce marketable outputs, such as care for environment or fellow human being on a voluntary basis. This needs a culture/norm shift, but it is possible.

sologoub 9y ago
One of the unintended consequence that just occurred to me is trying to game the system with the number of children to secure the greatest total income. This could lead to unsustainable (not that we know if our current population size is sustainable) population growth/explosion. To combat such gaming, the UBI may need to phase out payments beyond replacement rate until they reach 18 or something like that.
- eesmith 9y ago
  Your observation which just occurred to you has been a long-time bugbear of the conservative tabloid "Daily Mail" and at least some Tories. Here's an article combining the two: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364718/No-benefit-child-youre-dole-Tories-unveil-controversial-welfare-plan.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364718/No-benefit-c... . My view is that people don't want to simply maximize income, otherwise everyone would have two or three jobs and no free time. And taking care of children sometimes feels like having an extra job. I think the Daily Mail, etc. view comes from the idea that the poor are poor simply because they are a bad type of person, and not because of, say, structural inequalities or class oppression. Bear also in mind that those countries with a level high amount of social services (long paternity leave, free day care, subsidies for children, etc.) tend also to have low rates of childbirth. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#Coercive_population_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#Coercive_population... : > In many countries, the steady decline in birth rates over the past decades can be greatly attributed to the significant gains in women's freedoms, such as tackling the phenomenon of forced marriage and child marriage, education for women and increased socioeconomic opportunities. Women of all economic, social, religious and educational persuasions are choosing to have less children as they are gaining more control over their own reproductive rights. Apart from more children living into their adult years, women are often more ambitious to take up work, education and living their own lives rather than just a life of reproduction.[45] Birth rates in third world countries have fallen due to the introduction of family planning clinics.

ozy 9y ago

I am in favor of UBI, a few remarks: - mostly because people on the bottom can be powerless and get stuck in low paying jobs, no means to move, to re-educate, etc. - today most countries already redistribute money, in form of minimum wage, tax cuts, food stamps, disability benefits, heath insurance, etc. - UBI is a dial, you can turn it up, or turn it down, redistribute 15% of all value created is not unreasonable, some European countries are already at 10-15% - make sure every dollar earned, helps you move forward, benefits, UBI, taxation, should never have jumps in scales, but always be linear (this is horribly off in my country today) - drug misuse, poor that cannot handle money, is a problem today, and UBI won't solve it, it's not on the agenda to dump all social workers ... - lazy hipsters, that is intuitive but likely wrong, ... UBI is not exactly luxurious living, you'd want a job or no car, no nice clothes, no travelling, etc ...

mcbruiser3 9y ago

I am starting to suspect that a lot of the support for UBI is actually fake news, propagated by agents of Putin, or perhaps by people dumb enough to fall for fake news with a pro-communist ulterior motive.