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This is very interesting, but is it not also worth noting that the community allowed this money is very controlled? The idea of a basic income is that everyone

This is very interesting, but is it not also worth noting that the community allowed this money is very controlled? The idea of a basic income is that everyone gets it, regardless of where you live in the country, and other factors. My problem with basic income is that once you start, there will always be a demand to increase it, and enormous political pressure to increase it, along with people from all over the world wanting into the system. For a small population of native Americans, it seems to work very very well, but I don't think it's sustainable for an entire country.

sputknick 9y ago
Another problem that I see is that it will very quickly become "not basic" in that we might give everyone $2,000 a month, but then quickly politicians will advocate for certain constituents to get more. "People who work as teachers in poor neighborhoods should get an extra $500 a month" or "People who have been convicted of X Y or Z crime should get $500 less for the rest of their lives".
- ravenstine 9y ago
  We might also see the same thing that's happened with minimum wage and student loans. (where basic income no longer covers even the basics)
  - zlynx 9y ago
    Yes, well, as long as it covers the basics somewhere. Someone living on only basic income won't be able to afford to live in Manhattan. They'll have to move to rural Alabama.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      Maybe you still can't live in Manhattan but I don't really see the point in a UBI so low that you can't afford to live in a city at all.
      - indubitable 9y ago
        I think helping with the economic development of smaller areas would be a huge benefit in and of itself. But basic income opens up really revolutionary ideas beyond this. Imagine you get 10,000 people together and the income is set to something quite low - $1000 a month. That's $10 million a month that, if a moderate sized group of people were willing to coordinate and work together, could be used to build new cities and developments from the ground up. In a way a basic income can almost be seen as a decentralization of government as it enables citizens to direct government funded spending at their discretion.
        NinoScript 9y ago
        I had never thought about it like this. This makes so much sense.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      But that's the thing: you can do that today: live minimally for a year at big-city wages, then buy a trailer in rural Alabama. If people don't consider that a viable option now, neither will they with any feasible basic income level.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    Right, that's IMHO the biggest problem with BI schemes, and it gets little attention: we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. It's illustrated well in Churchill's story about the do-gooders who bought out a bridge and lifted the toll, only to find that rents went up by the exact cost of regularly crossing the bridge. http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can.html http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-... (Search for "bridge".) If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      From my point of view, people who push for basic income also tend to push for things such as rent control. They see wealth/capital consolidation as a bad thing to ban.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. > If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners. But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it.
      - SilasX 9y ago
        >We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. "It's driven by rational and irrational forces" isn't an explanation. >But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it. So you're saying the bridge scenario didn't and can't happen?
- Simulacra 9y ago
  Good point. Another for the mix that I think someone may have already touched on, and that is if you're low income, and if business, etc. knows the government is giving you a basic income, then they'll just raise prices to offset that income. Kind of like the arguments against raising the minimum wage.
ravenstine 9y ago
It would probably require either isolationism or a true global government, and neither of those are feasible or desirable. That's undoubtedly why our economies tend to be mixed because basic income in a place like America would require too much sacrifice to sustain in the long term. This is going to become more of a challenging problem as humans become obsolete. Before an actual post-scarcity society, we will need government provided basic income, which is simultaneously a scary thought if we don't solve a bunch of other global problems first.
rizzom5000 9y ago
It's also worth noting that these payments are funded by casino revenue for that very small population. This article would look very different if some members of the tribe were taxed heavily to provide the payments to other members.
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
>My problem with basic income is that once you start, there will always be a demand to increase it, and enormous political pressure to increase it How is this a problem? If enough people support an increase in the UBI that politicians feel they have to raise it, isn't that a good thing?
- xaqfox 9y ago
  Sometimes it would need to be raised and sometimes it would need to be lowered. It will, however, always be a politically unpopular position to lower it, even if it needs being done.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    I guess I don't see that as really a problem with UBI though. The same is true of the criminal justice system (and lots of other government functions), for example, tons of pressure to increase sentences and basically none to lower them. It seems more like a problem with representative government than anything else.
- colemannugent 9y ago
  When do you stop raising it? If people could vote themselves more money the voter turnout would be insane. How would anyone control something like that? Anyone who ran against the increases would be easily defeated with something like this: "My opponent wants to take the money you deserve!". At some point you would be giving people more money than you produce as a country and then it's only a matter of time until the money runs out. Once the money runs out then your government will evaporate as the enraged populace tries to pin the blame on one group. This of course is on of the central issues with government run wealth redistribution programs, nobody wants less money and they will go to the polls to protect it. Whatever you think of the ACA/Obamacare in the US, once it got established and started paying out there is almost no way to repeal it as no one wants to lose their benefits. Even establishment Republicans learned their lesson and are now leaving it alone after seeing that they angered many Americans who enjoyed those benefits and threatened their chances of being re-elected.
Retric 9y ago
I suspect the reverse. Once basic income exists there will always be pressure from the top (who don't directly benefit) to reduce it. In the end it's the classic choice. People want more from the government and they also want to pay less taxes which ends up at a balance point.
r00fus 9y ago
> My problem with basic income is that once you start, there will always be a demand to increase it, and enormous political pressure to increase it This same logic applies to corporate welfare as well - and you can see the results (see latest tax bill). The differentiating factor is that, in one case you give to those without much political power vs. giving to those who have enough power to play havoc with your politics (or have already controlled/captured it). A bit of perspective helps to balance the slippery slope danger you presented.
gumby 9y ago
> My problem with basic income is that once you start, there will always be a demand to increase it, and enormous political pressure to increase it... Edmund Burke famously made this argument in the 18th century as an example of a problem with universal franchise (letting non-property owners vote). Supposedly the "masses" would vote for more and more handouts. Personally, I think the universal franchise has worked out pretty well overall, and this problem has, if anything, gone the wrong way even during the big bouts of progressivism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And even when they went overboard as they did in the UK, they recovered, perhaps over-recovered. But in the long run it seems to converge fine.

sputknick 9y ago

Another problem that I see is that it will very quickly become "not basic" in that we might give everyone $2,000 a month, but then quickly politicians will advocate for certain constituents to get more. "People who work as teachers in poor neighborhoods should get an extra $500 a month" or "People who have been convicted of X Y or Z crime should get $500 less for the rest of their lives".

ravenstine 9y ago
We might also see the same thing that's happened with minimum wage and student loans. (where basic income no longer covers even the basics)
- zlynx 9y ago
  Yes, well, as long as it covers the basics somewhere. Someone living on only basic income won't be able to afford to live in Manhattan. They'll have to move to rural Alabama.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    Maybe you still can't live in Manhattan but I don't really see the point in a UBI so low that you can't afford to live in a city at all.
    - indubitable 9y ago
      I think helping with the economic development of smaller areas would be a huge benefit in and of itself. But basic income opens up really revolutionary ideas beyond this. Imagine you get 10,000 people together and the income is set to something quite low - $1000 a month. That's $10 million a month that, if a moderate sized group of people were willing to coordinate and work together, could be used to build new cities and developments from the ground up. In a way a basic income can almost be seen as a decentralization of government as it enables citizens to direct government funded spending at their discretion.
      - NinoScript 9y ago
        I had never thought about it like this. This makes so much sense.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    But that's the thing: you can do that today: live minimally for a year at big-city wages, then buy a trailer in rural Alabama. If people don't consider that a viable option now, neither will they with any feasible basic income level.
- SilasX 9y ago
  Right, that's IMHO the biggest problem with BI schemes, and it gets little attention: we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. It's illustrated well in Churchill's story about the do-gooders who bought out a bridge and lifted the toll, only to find that rents went up by the exact cost of regularly crossing the bridge. http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can.html http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-... (Search for "bridge".) If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    From my point of view, people who push for basic income also tend to push for things such as rent control. They see wealth/capital consolidation as a bad thing to ban.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. > If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners. But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      >We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. "It's driven by rational and irrational forces" isn't an explanation. >But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it. So you're saying the bridge scenario didn't and can't happen?
Simulacra 9y ago
Good point. Another for the mix that I think someone may have already touched on, and that is if you're low income, and if business, etc. knows the government is giving you a basic income, then they'll just raise prices to offset that income. Kind of like the arguments against raising the minimum wage.

ravenstine 9y ago

It would probably require either isolationism or a true global government, and neither of those are feasible or desirable. That's undoubtedly why our economies tend to be mixed because basic income in a place like America would require too much sacrifice to sustain in the long term. This is going to become more of a challenging problem as humans become obsolete. Before an actual post-scarcity society, we will need government provided basic income, which is simultaneously a scary thought if we don't solve a bunch of other global problems first.

rizzom5000 9y ago

It's also worth noting that these payments are funded by casino revenue for that very small population. This article would look very different if some members of the tribe were taxed heavily to provide the payments to other members.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

>My problem with basic income is that once you start, there will always be a demand to increase it, and enormous political pressure to increase it How is this a problem? If enough people support an increase in the UBI that politicians feel they have to raise it, isn't that a good thing?

xaqfox 9y ago
Sometimes it would need to be raised and sometimes it would need to be lowered. It will, however, always be a politically unpopular position to lower it, even if it needs being done.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  I guess I don't see that as really a problem with UBI though. The same is true of the criminal justice system (and lots of other government functions), for example, tons of pressure to increase sentences and basically none to lower them. It seems more like a problem with representative government than anything else.
colemannugent 9y ago
When do you stop raising it? If people could vote themselves more money the voter turnout would be insane. How would anyone control something like that? Anyone who ran against the increases would be easily defeated with something like this: "My opponent wants to take the money you deserve!". At some point you would be giving people more money than you produce as a country and then it's only a matter of time until the money runs out. Once the money runs out then your government will evaporate as the enraged populace tries to pin the blame on one group. This of course is on of the central issues with government run wealth redistribution programs, nobody wants less money and they will go to the polls to protect it. Whatever you think of the ACA/Obamacare in the US, once it got established and started paying out there is almost no way to repeal it as no one wants to lose their benefits. Even establishment Republicans learned their lesson and are now leaving it alone after seeing that they angered many Americans who enjoyed those benefits and threatened their chances of being re-elected.

Retric 9y ago

I suspect the reverse. Once basic income exists there will always be pressure from the top (who don't directly benefit) to reduce it. In the end it's the classic choice. People want more from the government and they also want to pay less taxes which ends up at a balance point.

r00fus 9y ago

> My problem with basic income is that once you start, there will always be a demand to increase it, and enormous political pressure to increase it This same logic applies to corporate welfare as well - and you can see the results (see latest tax bill). The differentiating factor is that, in one case you give to those without much political power vs. giving to those who have enough power to play havoc with your politics (or have already controlled/captured it). A bit of perspective helps to balance the slippery slope danger you presented.

gumby 9y ago

> My problem with basic income is that once you start, there will always be a demand to increase it, and enormous political pressure to increase it... Edmund Burke famously made this argument in the 18th century as an example of a problem with universal franchise (letting non-property owners vote). Supposedly the "masses" would vote for more and more handouts. Personally, I think the universal franchise has worked out pretty well overall, and this problem has, if anything, gone the wrong way even during the big bouts of progressivism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And even when they went overboard as they did in the UK, they recovered, perhaps over-recovered. But in the long run it seems to converge fine.