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I generally favor UBI because it's basically wealth transfer from the wealthy to the less wealthy and I support those policies. UBI seems like a poor response

I generally favor UBI because it's basically wealth transfer from the wealthy to the less wealthy and I support those policies. UBI seems like a poor response to the shifting nature of work. Yang himself implies that automation will "come for" some groups before others. I.e. subsequent subsets of the population will lose 100% of their income. Increasing the income of everyone seems like a poor response. If we want to support workers who worked or trained for a job that has been automated away why don't we...do that? If we want to overhaul our society into a place that no longer forces people to work to live I'm also in favor of that! It's just different.

mrob 7y ago
Because UBI is the only welfare system that can't be gamed. How do you identify "workers who worked or trained for a job that has been automated away"? Non-universal welfare wastes a lot of resources on conflict between potential welfare recipients and the state, and it inevitably mis-categorizes people, which causes suffering either directly when the "deserving" are denied it, or via resentment when the "undeserving" are granted it.
- aeturnum 7y ago
  >Non-universal welfare wastes a lot of resources It seems like you're saying that UBI is more efficient we don't need spend resources on targeting it. I 100% agree for the general case of wealth transfer. I think it's very weak for addressing specific job losses. So, let's say we have 100 people and 10 of them lost their jobs to automation but we don't know which. One option is the "Yang plan" of $12 a year ($1 a month), so we have a budget of $1200[0]. That spends $1200 giving $120 of assistance to the people we want to help. This plan is 10% efficient if the point is to help those who have lost their jobs. In fact, with a budget of $1200, we can spend up to $108 per person identifying if they lost their job due to automation and have the same efficiency (10%). That is a really high ceiling on the cost of conflict. I'm very skeptical that in any real world situation the cost of identifying worthy recipients is greater than the "loss" of giving everyone else money. Again, only if the goal is helping workers who lost their jobs. Hell, even if you're wrong 50% of the time and give 15 people $12, you would need your method of identification to cost $60 (5x the benefit) for it to be 10% efficient! Again, I favor UBI and I favor transforming society to function differently, but that's not helping workers who lost jobs. [0] These are ofc not the real numbers Yang is suggesting
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    I always assumed part or perhaps most of the funding would come from flattening the tax system.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Yeah. I feel the same as you. On a macro scale distributing funds to middle and lower class is a net gain for the economy since I don't believe the trickle down effect works and those groups will spend the money and keep it flowing through the economy. It just makes sense to me that the economy is stimulated by demand instead of supply. However, I agree UBI seems to be going to people who may not need it. However, I like the simplicity of it. If you start into differing requirements down the line those will accumulate and you hit a slippery slope and it devolves into our current tax code nightmare with thousand pages of what it takes to be qualified for UBI. So it's heavy handed but simple, which I like.
- shantly 7y ago
  > It just makes sense to me that the economy is stimulated by demand instead of supply. Maybe my experience is atypical, but I've seen, over and over, hiring driven by either 1) we have more demand than we expected, or 2) we have good reason to expect more demand and should hire now to support that. I've never seen "we have money, but no extra demand and no reason to expect any, so we better hire". "We got a tax cut but have nothing for extra workers to do—better hire anyway" said no business owner ever. Which is to say I have no friggin' idea what supply-side is going on about. Yeah there's probably some hypothetical situation in which growth can be supply-constrained, but in the presence of demand that problem will fix itself pretty quickly, guaranteed. The opposite clearly isn't true at all.

mrob 7y ago

Because UBI is the only welfare system that can't be gamed. How do you identify "workers who worked or trained for a job that has been automated away"? Non-universal welfare wastes a lot of resources on conflict between potential welfare recipients and the state, and it inevitably mis-categorizes people, which causes suffering either directly when the "deserving" are denied it, or via resentment when the "undeserving" are granted it.

aeturnum 7y ago
>Non-universal welfare wastes a lot of resources It seems like you're saying that UBI is more efficient we don't need spend resources on targeting it. I 100% agree for the general case of wealth transfer. I think it's very weak for addressing specific job losses. So, let's say we have 100 people and 10 of them lost their jobs to automation but we don't know which. One option is the "Yang plan" of $12 a year ($1 a month), so we have a budget of $1200[0]. That spends $1200 giving $120 of assistance to the people we want to help. This plan is 10% efficient if the point is to help those who have lost their jobs. In fact, with a budget of $1200, we can spend up to $108 per person identifying if they lost their job due to automation and have the same efficiency (10%). That is a really high ceiling on the cost of conflict. I'm very skeptical that in any real world situation the cost of identifying worthy recipients is greater than the "loss" of giving everyone else money. Again, only if the goal is helping workers who lost their jobs. Hell, even if you're wrong 50% of the time and give 15 people $12, you would need your method of identification to cost $60 (5x the benefit) for it to be 10% efficient! Again, I favor UBI and I favor transforming society to function differently, but that's not helping workers who lost jobs. [0] These are ofc not the real numbers Yang is suggesting
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I always assumed part or perhaps most of the funding would come from flattening the tax system.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

Yeah. I feel the same as you. On a macro scale distributing funds to middle and lower class is a net gain for the economy since I don't believe the trickle down effect works and those groups will spend the money and keep it flowing through the economy. It just makes sense to me that the economy is stimulated by demand instead of supply. However, I agree UBI seems to be going to people who may not need it. However, I like the simplicity of it. If you start into differing requirements down the line those will accumulate and you hit a slippery slope and it devolves into our current tax code nightmare with thousand pages of what it takes to be qualified for UBI. So it's heavy handed but simple, which I like.

shantly 7y ago
> It just makes sense to me that the economy is stimulated by demand instead of supply. Maybe my experience is atypical, but I've seen, over and over, hiring driven by either 1) we have more demand than we expected, or 2) we have good reason to expect more demand and should hire now to support that. I've never seen "we have money, but no extra demand and no reason to expect any, so we better hire". "We got a tax cut but have nothing for extra workers to do—better hire anyway" said no business owner ever. Which is to say I have no friggin' idea what supply-side is going on about. Yeah there's probably some hypothetical situation in which growth can be supply-constrained, but in the presence of demand that problem will fix itself pretty quickly, guaranteed. The opposite clearly isn't true at all.