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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 matte

by 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.
- ajuc 9y ago
  In this situation (4 kids, 2000 PLN per month from working) only the first child gets 500 PLN per month conditional on not working. The remaining 3 kids get 1500 PLN per month no matter if you work or no. So it's a decision between 3500 per month or 2000 per month and free time. So 500+ (3500 or 2000 and free time) is something between communism (2000 or 2000 and free time) and UBI (4000 or 2000 and free time). Also like 90%+ of society has 2 kids or less, so it's tuned for 2 kids, not 4, and that's where the decision is more interesting (2500 or 1000 and free time). And there's black market for jobs, especially in poor areas, so there you can have both (and only the state loses, because it pushes people not to pay taxes). Yeah in conclusion I think 500+ is even worse than UBI, but thankfully it's only 500 PLN per child, so around 25% of average salary.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    The main problem with it is that we cannot afford UBI. Back of the envelope calculations say we would go bankrupt within a year giving out just 500 PLN/month/person. Which is way not enough to live on. A serious amount would be 4x that. (Which would amount to about 100 billion PLN or 16 billion Euro or similar USD. Not counting overhead. Essentially eating a sizable chunk of GDP. Some ways to cut it would be free public housing and transport - where? How much?) Even 500+ as currently implemented is too expensive. It is essentially financed by debt right now. And currently Poland is somewhere around 60% debt. I suspect even USA cannot afford it long term given the state of debt. They had trouble even with public healthcare.
    - ajuc 9y ago
      We're giving 500 PLN a month to 3 800 000 people right now. If we scaled that to full population it would be 50 PLN. 6 times that (so - 300 PLN) isn't that big a stretch (especially that you get like half of that back in taxes from increased consumption). It's doable for a few years. Especially, if you cut some other social costs (but then it has to be more than 300 PLN per month).
      - 9y ago
mnsc 9y ago
"I lived in a country that had something very similar..." "You could go to jail for not working in these times, so people pretended to work, but they weren't really working." That is not the ideal way to implement UBI imho.
- ajuc 9y ago
  Yeah I'm listing the differences. Still both communism and UBI eliminated the negative consequences of not working.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    But under Polish communism, did you get more money for working, and was that money useful? UBI is just a basic minimum, it isn't likely to satisfy most people like a minimum wage job at McDs isn't.
    - ajuc 9y ago
      Not working was a crime, money was useless past the "enough to pay bills" point. But it didn't started that way, it got progressively worse, and I think UBI can have the same result if it lowers the output enough.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      The money as it is was not too useful. Until the grand USSR food crunch things worked out relatively fine for most of Poland. (But not most of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia as far as I'm aware) Reasons for that failure are too complex for the post but paying for non-work was not really major one of them. However the industries stagnated and once competition went on they died. Not to mention scandalous sales of critical companies just to make them private.
vostok 9y ago
I think the idea is that UBI will come without the grift, corruption, and other issues from the communist bloc. A world where you have UBI, but can still work for Google and make truckloads of money is very different from communism.
- ajuc 9y ago
  Corruption in communism was a consequence of centralization and lack of democratic control of the government (here UBI is different), and of money losing their value (here UBI will be most probably similar). If you get money no matter what - money are worth less and less compared to what you can buy for them, and to stop that they might introduce rationing, and that's just asking for corruption.
  - mrob 9y ago
    Most people advocating UBI want just enough to keep people out of poverty. People will still want additional money for luxuries, so money will retain most of its value and capitalism will function as normal.
  - sologoub 9y ago
    You profoundly misunderstand the situation in the soviet economies - money became worthless not because money was easy to get, it was not as the salaries were very small, but because of poor central planning (and good central planning is impossible, since you cannot see the future) resulted in shortages of everything. At an extreme example, my grandfather could buy a new car every quarter with the salary he received as high ranking military officer stationed abroad, but the line for the car was 3-5 years long, even for well connected individuals. What good is your money then? The UBI society does not have that problem as no one is capping production because they view a particular good as a capitalist symbol or something.
    - ajuc 9y ago
      Money became worthless because you got more money than goods. The reasons for that are many, and irrelevant here - I do think UBI will have similar problem, because you give away money not covered by additional production.
closeparen 9y ago
Except "how do I motivate my workers to actually do work" isn't a problem we have as a society anymore, it's "oh shit what do we do with all these people no employer has any use for?"
- jahnu 9y ago
  To horrendously butcher a quote: "He who claims the unemployed should not be lazy but find jobs usually has none to offer nor knows where one can be found."
matt4077 9y ago
UBI and the former dictatorships in the east have absolutely nothing in common. In Poland pre-1990, you didn't just get money "no matter what". You got a salary for working , just like in the west. The difference, and cause for demotivation, was that you had only very limited say in what and where you'd work. So you're really good with numbers and have asthma? Road construction it is! UBI is nothing like that. It doesn't change the system free enterprise. In fact it's designed to do the opposite: remove the remaining threat of starvation, and see if it doesn't, once again, lead to an explosion of creativity and productivity.

by ajuc 9y ago

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.

ajuc 9y ago
In this situation (4 kids, 2000 PLN per month from working) only the first child gets 500 PLN per month conditional on not working. The remaining 3 kids get 1500 PLN per month no matter if you work or no. So it's a decision between 3500 per month or 2000 per month and free time. So 500+ (3500 or 2000 and free time) is something between communism (2000 or 2000 and free time) and UBI (4000 or 2000 and free time). Also like 90%+ of society has 2 kids or less, so it's tuned for 2 kids, not 4, and that's where the decision is more interesting (2500 or 1000 and free time). And there's black market for jobs, especially in poor areas, so there you can have both (and only the state loses, because it pushes people not to pay taxes). Yeah in conclusion I think 500+ is even worse than UBI, but thankfully it's only 500 PLN per child, so around 25% of average salary.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  The main problem with it is that we cannot afford UBI. Back of the envelope calculations say we would go bankrupt within a year giving out just 500 PLN/month/person. Which is way not enough to live on. A serious amount would be 4x that. (Which would amount to about 100 billion PLN or 16 billion Euro or similar USD. Not counting overhead. Essentially eating a sizable chunk of GDP. Some ways to cut it would be free public housing and transport - where? How much?) Even 500+ as currently implemented is too expensive. It is essentially financed by debt right now. And currently Poland is somewhere around 60% debt. I suspect even USA cannot afford it long term given the state of debt. They had trouble even with public healthcare.
  - ajuc 9y ago
    We're giving 500 PLN a month to 3 800 000 people right now. If we scaled that to full population it would be 50 PLN. 6 times that (so - 300 PLN) isn't that big a stretch (especially that you get like half of that back in taxes from increased consumption). It's doable for a few years. Especially, if you cut some other social costs (but then it has to be more than 300 PLN per month).
    - 9y ago

mnsc 9y ago

"I lived in a country that had something very similar..." "You could go to jail for not working in these times, so people pretended to work, but they weren't really working." That is not the ideal way to implement UBI imho.

ajuc 9y ago
Yeah I'm listing the differences. Still both communism and UBI eliminated the negative consequences of not working.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  But under Polish communism, did you get more money for working, and was that money useful? UBI is just a basic minimum, it isn't likely to satisfy most people like a minimum wage job at McDs isn't.
  - ajuc 9y ago
    Not working was a crime, money was useless past the "enough to pay bills" point. But it didn't started that way, it got progressively worse, and I think UBI can have the same result if it lowers the output enough.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    The money as it is was not too useful. Until the grand USSR food crunch things worked out relatively fine for most of Poland. (But not most of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia as far as I'm aware) Reasons for that failure are too complex for the post but paying for non-work was not really major one of them. However the industries stagnated and once competition went on they died. Not to mention scandalous sales of critical companies just to make them private.

vostok 9y ago

I think the idea is that UBI will come without the grift, corruption, and other issues from the communist bloc. A world where you have UBI, but can still work for Google and make truckloads of money is very different from communism.

ajuc 9y ago
Corruption in communism was a consequence of centralization and lack of democratic control of the government (here UBI is different), and of money losing their value (here UBI will be most probably similar). If you get money no matter what - money are worth less and less compared to what you can buy for them, and to stop that they might introduce rationing, and that's just asking for corruption.
- mrob 9y ago
  Most people advocating UBI want just enough to keep people out of poverty. People will still want additional money for luxuries, so money will retain most of its value and capitalism will function as normal.
- sologoub 9y ago
  You profoundly misunderstand the situation in the soviet economies - money became worthless not because money was easy to get, it was not as the salaries were very small, but because of poor central planning (and good central planning is impossible, since you cannot see the future) resulted in shortages of everything. At an extreme example, my grandfather could buy a new car every quarter with the salary he received as high ranking military officer stationed abroad, but the line for the car was 3-5 years long, even for well connected individuals. What good is your money then? The UBI society does not have that problem as no one is capping production because they view a particular good as a capitalist symbol or something.
  - ajuc 9y ago
    Money became worthless because you got more money than goods. The reasons for that are many, and irrelevant here - I do think UBI will have similar problem, because you give away money not covered by additional production.

closeparen 9y ago

Except "how do I motivate my workers to actually do work" isn't a problem we have as a society anymore, it's "oh shit what do we do with all these people no employer has any use for?"

jahnu 9y ago
To horrendously butcher a quote: "He who claims the unemployed should not be lazy but find jobs usually has none to offer nor knows where one can be found."

matt4077 9y ago

UBI and the former dictatorships in the east have absolutely nothing in common. In Poland pre-1990, you didn't just get money "no matter what". You got a salary for working , just like in the west. The difference, and cause for demotivation, was that you had only very limited say in what and where you'd work. So you're really good with numbers and have asthma? Road construction it is! UBI is nothing like that. It doesn't change the system free enterprise. In fact it's designed to do the opposite: remove the remaining threat of starvation, and see if it doesn't, once again, lead to an explosion of creativity and productivity.