4 ms·

> More and more it seems like some sort of UBI or welfare system is the only real option. Give people an income floor and don't worry if they flourish above tha

> More and more it seems like some sort of UBI or welfare system is the only real option. Give people an income floor and don't worry if they flourish above that, at least to a certain extent. Except: 1) UBI is unproven and 2) it strikes me as a bit of a band-aid solution designed mainly to avoid confronting certain ideological assumptions.

andrekandre 7y ago
also if it’s a fixed value (say $1000 a month), it 1. doesn’t cover the rising costs of medical care and insurance (in the us at least) 2. won’t keep up with inflation 3. sets up private markets to potentially inflate prices “because people have 1000 dollars extra to spend” UBI in concert with price limits for basic goods and services, insurance reform, and medical costs limits might have a chance.... but then you are now confronted with the potential that it’s now the “rich and large corporations” who are subsidizing everyone, giving them extraordinary political power over the govt/people i’m still skeptical of UBI
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  I'm skeptical of UBI too, but I think it would work best with the following combination: 1. UBI (including some fractional amount per child) 2. Free universal healthcare (i.e. Medicare is no longer age-limited) 3. Better education & free public universities 4. Some kind of higher tiers of UBI for disabled people who really need it (judged strictly) And then get rid of every single other means-tested benefit (including Social Security), as well as tax-advantaged retirement plans (which overwhelmingly benefit the already well-off), and get rid of the favorable tax on LTCGs and carried interest; everything pays full-freight income tax. After this, benefits are either free to everyone (i.e. healthcare) or you pay full freight out of your UBI. And UBI is not scaled by CoL, because it doesn't make sense to subsidize landlords in expensive cities. And even with all of that, it's not clear that it won't be vastly more expensive than the current system, making it effectively unaffordable. There's also the issue that some people will not spend their money correctly, e.g. they'll fritter it away on drugs/alcohol and not have enough to pay rent or buy food. So you'd need some kind of combination of food stamps and Section 8 housing vouchers, paid out of UBI, for people who need to be forced to allocate their money correctly (as there will no longer be any separate means-tested food stamps or housing assistance). I could see something like this working in smaller, well-connected, yet independent communities, but I'm struggling to see how it could scale up to a country the size of the US. The rich would be paying so much more in taxes to essentially subisidize many people who might choose not to work at all, that I think it's inevitable they'd manage to overthrow it. Like you, I think from a realpolitik view of things (if nothing else), that it can't work.
  - danenania 7y ago
    It seems to me that you are focusing on the costs of UBI (which are admittedly very large) and the edge cases where people might be lazy or irresponsible without also giving proper consideration to the massive and transformative benefits that it could bring. How much would UBI reduce the crime rate? How much would it increase the rate of entrepreneurship? How much would it reduce anxiety and depression? How much would it increase average education levels? Upward mobility? Democratic participation and voter turnout? Volunteer work and charitable giving? No one knows the answers to these and many other similar questions, but it seems plausible to me that the cumulative effect could produce drastically more wealth than it costs to implement. Our country (not to mention our world) is facing many extremely severe and worsening problems, many of which are rooted in economic inequality. We are, in my opinion, highly unlikely to solve these problems by incrementally chipping away at them, and the prospects for leaving them unsolved look increasingly bleak. So I think we need to be willing to consider big solutions if the cost-benefit analysis is favorable, even if they do require huge investments. We know UBI is technically affordable based on the amount of wealth that exists in our country—the question is whether it would really work (something we can test), and then if it would, whether we can summon the political resolve to make it happen.

andrekandre 7y ago

also if it’s a fixed value (say $1000 a month), it 1. doesn’t cover the rising costs of medical care and insurance (in the us at least) 2. won’t keep up with inflation 3. sets up private markets to potentially inflate prices “because people have 1000 dollars extra to spend” UBI in concert with price limits for basic goods and services, insurance reform, and medical costs limits might have a chance.... but then you are now confronted with the potential that it’s now the “rich and large corporations” who are subsidizing everyone, giving them extraordinary political power over the govt/people i’m still skeptical of UBI

CydeWeys 7y ago
I'm skeptical of UBI too, but I think it would work best with the following combination: 1. UBI (including some fractional amount per child) 2. Free universal healthcare (i.e. Medicare is no longer age-limited) 3. Better education & free public universities 4. Some kind of higher tiers of UBI for disabled people who really need it (judged strictly) And then get rid of every single other means-tested benefit (including Social Security), as well as tax-advantaged retirement plans (which overwhelmingly benefit the already well-off), and get rid of the favorable tax on LTCGs and carried interest; everything pays full-freight income tax. After this, benefits are either free to everyone (i.e. healthcare) or you pay full freight out of your UBI. And UBI is not scaled by CoL, because it doesn't make sense to subsidize landlords in expensive cities. And even with all of that, it's not clear that it won't be vastly more expensive than the current system, making it effectively unaffordable. There's also the issue that some people will not spend their money correctly, e.g. they'll fritter it away on drugs/alcohol and not have enough to pay rent or buy food. So you'd need some kind of combination of food stamps and Section 8 housing vouchers, paid out of UBI, for people who need to be forced to allocate their money correctly (as there will no longer be any separate means-tested food stamps or housing assistance). I could see something like this working in smaller, well-connected, yet independent communities, but I'm struggling to see how it could scale up to a country the size of the US. The rich would be paying so much more in taxes to essentially subisidize many people who might choose not to work at all, that I think it's inevitable they'd manage to overthrow it. Like you, I think from a realpolitik view of things (if nothing else), that it can't work.
- danenania 7y ago
  It seems to me that you are focusing on the costs of UBI (which are admittedly very large) and the edge cases where people might be lazy or irresponsible without also giving proper consideration to the massive and transformative benefits that it could bring. How much would UBI reduce the crime rate? How much would it increase the rate of entrepreneurship? How much would it reduce anxiety and depression? How much would it increase average education levels? Upward mobility? Democratic participation and voter turnout? Volunteer work and charitable giving? No one knows the answers to these and many other similar questions, but it seems plausible to me that the cumulative effect could produce drastically more wealth than it costs to implement. Our country (not to mention our world) is facing many extremely severe and worsening problems, many of which are rooted in economic inequality. We are, in my opinion, highly unlikely to solve these problems by incrementally chipping away at them, and the prospects for leaving them unsolved look increasingly bleak. So I think we need to be willing to consider big solutions if the cost-benefit analysis is favorable, even if they do require huge investments. We know UBI is technically affordable based on the amount of wealth that exists in our country—the question is whether it would really work (something we can test), and then if it would, whether we can summon the political resolve to make it happen.