5 ms·

>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

>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.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >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!". Yeah, that seems mostly fine to me though (aside from the rhetoric.) If an increase in UBI makes life meaningfully better for enough people and they turn out to increase it that seems like democracy in action. >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. Seems pretty hyperbolic.
  - colemannugent 9y ago
    I apologize for the hyperbolic tone of my earlier post, I meant to approach this from more of a thermodynamic angle, ie. money in versus money out. You cannot continually raise the UBI, as this is economically untenable, however there will be significant pressure to raise it every time there is a vote. I haven't seen any UBI proposal that addresses this. Plus there is another real issue with a true UBI: inflation. If everyone in the US made $100,000 a year then an iPhone would cost $8000 instead of $800 as people could afford to pay more and Apple would adjust their price accordingly. How do existing UBI schemes plan to avoid this?
    - vec 9y ago
      A UBI scheme can't just create value from thin air; it has to come from either taxes or from devaluing the currency by printing more, which is basically a tax by another name.* Given that fact, there must be at least some class of relatively wealthy people who come out worse off, even after their UBI checks. The bigger the check, the larger that class of people. Since those people aren't idiots, they'll apply political counterpressure against raising the rate. Because there's still the same total amount of money in the system, (inflation adjusted) prices can't go up too much. According to the Econ 101 model, goods with a fixed supply will probably get more expensive since there are more potential customers wanting the same amount of stuff, but goods with an extremely flexible supply will get cheaper, again, because there are more potential customers to spread the fixed costs over. * There's also a sort-of-UBI variant where the funds come from monetizing some big nationalized resource and distributing the proceeds (e.g. the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend). In that case the above doesn't apply, but neither does your fear. Since in that case the pool of money is dictated by the market value of the resource the voters can't directly impact how much they'll receive.
vec 9y ago
As an empirical observation, in the US we currently have one group of politicians advocating for a larger safety net and a different group strongly advocating for lower taxes. Sometimes the bigger safety net people win, taxes go up, and payouts go up. Sometimes the lower taxes people win, taxes go down, and payouts shrink. Eventually these forces hit a stable equilibrium (or a semi-stable "pendulum") and the tax and benefit rates don't seem to explode or contract endlessly. I don't see any reason to expect that a basic income would be any different.

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.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
>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!". Yeah, that seems mostly fine to me though (aside from the rhetoric.) If an increase in UBI makes life meaningfully better for enough people and they turn out to increase it that seems like democracy in action. >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. Seems pretty hyperbolic.
- colemannugent 9y ago
  I apologize for the hyperbolic tone of my earlier post, I meant to approach this from more of a thermodynamic angle, ie. money in versus money out. You cannot continually raise the UBI, as this is economically untenable, however there will be significant pressure to raise it every time there is a vote. I haven't seen any UBI proposal that addresses this. Plus there is another real issue with a true UBI: inflation. If everyone in the US made $100,000 a year then an iPhone would cost $8000 instead of $800 as people could afford to pay more and Apple would adjust their price accordingly. How do existing UBI schemes plan to avoid this?
  - vec 9y ago
    A UBI scheme can't just create value from thin air; it has to come from either taxes or from devaluing the currency by printing more, which is basically a tax by another name.* Given that fact, there must be at least some class of relatively wealthy people who come out worse off, even after their UBI checks. The bigger the check, the larger that class of people. Since those people aren't idiots, they'll apply political counterpressure against raising the rate. Because there's still the same total amount of money in the system, (inflation adjusted) prices can't go up too much. According to the Econ 101 model, goods with a fixed supply will probably get more expensive since there are more potential customers wanting the same amount of stuff, but goods with an extremely flexible supply will get cheaper, again, because there are more potential customers to spread the fixed costs over. * There's also a sort-of-UBI variant where the funds come from monetizing some big nationalized resource and distributing the proceeds (e.g. the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend). In that case the above doesn't apply, but neither does your fear. Since in that case the pool of money is dictated by the market value of the resource the voters can't directly impact how much they'll receive.

vec 9y ago

As an empirical observation, in the US we currently have one group of politicians advocating for a larger safety net and a different group strongly advocating for lower taxes. Sometimes the bigger safety net people win, taxes go up, and payouts go up. Sometimes the lower taxes people win, taxes go down, and payouts shrink. Eventually these forces hit a stable equilibrium (or a semi-stable "pendulum") and the tax and benefit rates don't seem to explode or contract endlessly. I don't see any reason to expect that a basic income would be any different.