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AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income
- zentiggr 7y agoGood - let's have a real world test and see whether there is something behind UBI as a concept. And perhaps this'll be the first program to survive the trolls and nay-sayers who will find the smallest niche failures and sspout the "If ANYONE falls through the cracks it's a FAILURE!"
- claudeganon 7y agoIt’s not UBI if you means test a lot of the poor out of it, which this bill actually does. Instead, it’s just going to push them even further away from things like stable housing, as landlords jack up rents to eat it all up.
- hedora 7y agoAlso, it’s funded by a regressive tax. Also, my reading says everyone’s rent (edit: and child care!) is going up 10%, but hopefully, I’m wrong: > It is the intent of the Legislature to fund the CalUBI Program with a value-added tax of 10 percent on goods and services, except medicine, medical supplies and equipment, educational materials, including textbooks, tuition or fees for education, food, groceries, and clothing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vorpalhex 7y agoI think the issue is usually the money isn't enough to be meaningfully helpful and the cost of running the program is too high to be sustainable. However, I think another real world test to join the others is fine. You don't know the result until you do the experiment.
- stazz1 7y ago>You don't know the result until you do the experiment. Same reason you don't jump off a building to test gravity. There are better ways to test than irreparably derailing an economy by +not closing the inequality gap and +causing spikes of inflation any time you dish out money, proportional to how much you dish out
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoEven in CA this has no chance of passing, right? I mean they couldn't even pass the mass transit zoning changes. CA may be relatively liberal but I don't think it has the appetite for this level of increased taxation and spending.
- bun_at_work 7y agoThe thing is CA has a system where legislation can be passed by popular vote. This has it's up and down sides, but anything can pass in CA with enough public support.
- reaperducer 7y agoGood - let's have a real world test and see whether there is something behind UBI as a concept. Finland did a real world UBI test. Unless you don't consider Finland part of the "real world."
- dx87 7y agoDidn't Finland also tell the recipients ahead of time when the test would be ending? I know if I was told, "We're doing a UBI test for 2 years, you'll get 1k a month, no strings attached", I wouldn't quick working. I'd just pocket the free money since I know it's going to dry up at at a fixed date. If they said "Here's 1k a month forever, no strings attached", I'd sell my house and move to a low CoLA area where I could live off the 1k and persue other interests.
- deep-root 7y agoWikipedia has a list of various basic income pilot programs reaching back to the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots
- trothamel 7y agoIt seems that the line at the bottom about the 10% VAT on many goods and services seems just as interesting as the UBI (especially when the UBI seems to exclude many of the poorest Californians). I wonder how they will administer the VAT without other states cooperating with them.
- nerdjon 7y agoI am very confused about the math of this, unless California has a surplus of taxes coming in. Without even taking into account the existing tax rate in California, wouldn't this need an average of 10k of spending per person a month getting this to work out? Then again there are enough restrictions on this (seemingly largely the ones that would actually benefit the most from this) that it actually works out...
- Jtsummers 7y agoA VAT would apply to businesses as well as people. Considering the amount of manufacturing in CA, this would be quite significant.
- nerdjon 7y agoOk so that is the part that I was missing. So that does spread that out a bit if you take into account anyone buying those manufactured goods outside of the state. Then that personally raises the question on how this would scale nationwide, the cost to the business would ultimately be largely pushed down to the consumer. Maybe that is getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but I keep hearing about a UBI and I struggle with seeing the logistics of it.
- cabaalis 7y agoStates solving their own problems. If it's also properly funded by the state, it's the way it should be.
- snazz 7y agoIt says it will be funded by a 10% VAT.
- Aloha 7y agoWhich is only a couple percent more than existing sales tax
- hedora 7y agoCurrent sales tax is ~7.5%. Sales + VAT will be 17.5%, right?
- dangerboysteve 7y agothat's how I interpret that.
- dbbk 7y agoFor reference, VAT in the UK is 20%
- reaperducer 7y agoAlameda County sales tax is currently 9.75%. So 19.75% with VAT.
- claudeganon 7y agoI’m in favor of UBI, but it only works with floors on housing, healthcare, and possibly even food (which are more or less in place through ag subsidies anyway). All of this will just be eaten up by rents and rising healthcare costs, and means testing it makes it even more absurd, as it will exclude most vulnerable populations. Given the recent state-wide rent control, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a sop to landlords.
- jrbuhl 7y agoWouldn't it be easier to move away from the big cities and the big rents with ubi?
- claudeganon 7y agoNo, because that’s where the vast majority of jobs and other services are located.
- claydavisss 7y agoGavin Newsom is a weak leader. He can't control his party so we see no alignment on common-sense high-priority issues like housing and instead get DOA poppycock like this. Voters need to take Newsom to task for wasting this mandate. Will anything of merit result from the Democrat monopoly on power in Sacramento? BTW this is just Evan Low trying to break out and make a name for himself with high-profile publicity-stunt legislation.
- throwaway55554 7y ago> (b) California residents who are 18 years of age or older and receiving benefits under the Medi-Cal program, the County Medical Services Program, the CalFresh program, the CalWORKs program, or Unemployment Insurance shall not be eligible to receive a universal basic income under the CalUBI Program. I must be misunderstanding something. If you're unemployed and getting unemployment benefits you don't get your UBI? Isn't that part of the point of UBI? Edit: Thanks to everyone helping me understand what I was missing!
- SilasX 7y agoYes and no? The point of UBI is to replace all of that social spending (and its resultant nasty discontinuities), so that’s keeping with the spirit, kind of. Though even better (under the logic of UBI) would be to give it to everyone and get rid of those programs.
- vorpalhex 7y agoThe idea with UBI is that it replaces other forms of government assistance. Since this is a test and obviously California doesn't want to end it's unemployment insurance in case the test goes badly, it's exempting those people using the other programs from this one. Basically, no double dipping.
- throwaway55554 7y agoThat makes sense. I wonder why they don't migrate at least some of those people to UBI, though. I think that would be what you would want to test.
- vorpalhex 7y agoEthics. It'd be great to do a side by side but if the UBI test goes poorly you've derailed a lot of lives for your experiment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
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- Someone1234 7y agoI'm confused by "18992.1 (B)." So if you fall on hard times (e.g. unemployment) and UBI would be most beneficial you now have to pick between UBI and health insurance? That doesn't make basic sense to me, and undermines the whole "universal" part. Plus managing those exclusions would likely cost more than it would save (imagine all the additional management overhead of cross-checking programs and or having people certify they aren't on them/policing fraud). Actually I find the under-18 restriction kind of questionable too, since this could be a great system for supporting poor families. The real reason this cannot just happen outright is that it "competes" with too many other benefits that it could just outright replace instead. The biggest problem with scrapping health insurance for UBI is that health insurance is astronomically expensive. I can see the argument for giving families with kids $1K/per kid, and just scrapping the food program to name one example.
- Beltiras 7y agoIf Medicare 4 All is adopted then that would free up a lot of folks from that predicament.
- salimmadjd 7y agoUS Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has also indicated she'll be putting a UBI legislation on the US Congress house floor in the coming weeks. Edit: making it clear it's federal level not state level legislation.
- Aloha 7y agoPerhaps the authors of the bill are unaware that the U in UBI means Universal. If your unemployment benefits are less that UBI, you should get the difference in UBI, similarly excluding Medicaid recipients seems well, plain stupid.
- carlisle_ 7y agoIt doesn't exclude medicaid, that's a federal program. These are the programs it excludes: > Medi-Cal program, the County Medical Services Program, the CalFresh program, the CalWORKs program, or Unemployment Insurance I'm not entirely sure why, though.
- lukeschlather 7y agohttps://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/medi-cal https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/medi-cal > Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program. Because the ACA basically allows states to opt-out of providing medicaid, Medicaid has separate agencies for every state.
- carlisle_ 7y agoGood to know thank you.
- jonahss 7y agoMy read on the exclusions is that UBI as a form of welfare solves an issue all our other welfare programs have: attempting to apply credits to very specific costs instead of eliminating loads of administrative overhead and terrible paperwork by just giving people money to spend on what they actually need. cash instead of a giant coupon book which doesnt cover edgecases. So I could understand if they want to try to replace existing welfare programs with UBI and then ratchet up the UBI amount until its better than the old programs (and more flexible). But as-is, yeah, this doesnt help some of the ppl who need it most
- Aloha 7y ago
- rmah 7y agoCan they not do basic math? There are around 30 mil adults in California. Even if provision 18992.1 (b) is 5 mil people, that's still 25 mil people. That's 25 mil * $12,000 = $300 bil a year. The ENTIRE California state budget for 2020 is only $220 bil. They would have to more than double the tax revenue for a state with already very high taxes. Now, assuming the most generous interpretation of their 10% VAT proposal... which means a 10% VAT on things like rent, transportation, etc. CA has around 11.5mil households with apx $40k/household of spending, which yields $460bil @ 10% => $46bil in additional tax revenue. This won't work. It's just meaningless hot hair.
- mech1234 7y agoThis bill will not pass. Its introduction is primarily a signalling exercise and a populist rallying cry.
- option 7y agowe should vote out those who introduced it. In CA it is very easy to vote by mail. Please do
- option 7y agoChecked my (already filled in mail-in ballot). No, Evan Low (who introduced this) aren’t getting my vote now. (and I have to request a new ballot now :( )
- purplezooey 7y agoWhile you're at it, also vote out your state senator that voted against SB 50.
- option 7y agoI did
- phreeza 7y agoThis exact thing was said about Brexit, too.
- williesleg 7y agoGreat! Can they mail my check to my home in New York?
- whiddershins 7y agoUbi ... it’s right there in the name: universal. A ubi test that isn’t universal seems potentially counterproductive to me.
- cm2187 7y agoIf I read it correctly it seems to apply to all residents over 18, present legally or not. Combining UBI with open borders / non enforcement of immigration policy is going to be interesting from a budget point of view.
- swamp40 7y agoEspecially when the new census shows there are an additional 5 million illegals in CA that have never been counted anywhere before.
- JamesLeonis 7y ago"California Resident" is a significant phrase. Here's an entire document that details how California determines it [0], specifically how it taxes those individuals. Sections F through I, with specific details in G, govern these specifications. How about doing a little digging before appealing to wild speculation? [0]: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2019/2019-1031-publication.pdf https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2019/2019-1031-publication.pdf
- cm2187 7y ago> How about doing a little digging before appealing to wild speculation? Since you are being condescendent about this, would you perhaps mind letting me know where in that document it states that you need to have entered the US legally to be resident?
- kyleee 7y agoDo you mind providing a summary for those following this thread?
- exabrial 7y agoNothing that requires the labors of other is a "right". UBI funded by private equity is fine. UBI funded by taxes is theft and extortion.
- danhak 7y agoHmmm, how about my right to a fair and speedy trial? That requires the labor of others, doesn’t it?
- throwaway17_17 7y agoThat is a right exercises against the government. Specifically the Courts which are created by Federal and State statures. The labor in question is on behalf of the government.
- SkyBelow 7y agoIt is a cost that the government has to provide you if they want to try you. Put another way, it is saying the government has the right to try someone only if they can provide a fair and speedy trial (with lawyers for those who can't afford one). If they cannot provide this, they cannot try you for a crime. Thus, by choosing to try someone, they consent to the payment required to provide these services. At least in theory, this does not involve you receiving someone else's labor without their consent.
- the_gastropod 7y agoI think you're drawing a distinction where one does not exist. The government pays for these services with tax money (which you seem to be suggesting is "receiving someone's labor without their consent")
- SkyBelow 7y agoI think the distinction still exists, just in a slightly different form. Let's take two alternative government. One that works by having volunteers and one that prints money to pay people. Right to a speedy trial: Government 1 cannot charge you unless they have enough volunteers to guarantee a speedy trial. If there aren't enough volunteers, you still have this right by the government not charging you (even if you really deserve it). Government 2 cannot charge you unless they have printed enough money and found enough people willing to accept it as payment to guarantee you a speedy trial. If they can't find enough people willing to do this job, they can still provide this right by not charging you. Right to health care: Government 1 cannot provide this right unless it has enough volunteers. If there aren't volunteers, then it cannot provide you the basic health care. Government 2 cannot provide you this right unless it has enough people willing to accept money to do so. If people aren't willing to, for what ever reason, you aren't going to get health care. This is a fundamental difference between rights that say "The government cannot X unless they Y" (in some cases the Y exception may not exist at all) and that say "The government must Z". Logistically you might be able to have the second kind of right functioning with a near 100% up time, due to how the sorts of people are recruited to do the work needed to provide that right, but it is still a fundamental difference from the first kind.
- aty268 7y agoIf you own real estate in California, I would sell while you still can.
- johnnyjukey 7y agoProposition 13 treats all California property taxes the same. Voters could change that in 2020
- kyledrake 7y agoIf you pass this without passing radical reform of zoning and building millions more homes, it will be yet another wealth transfer mechanism from poor consumers to wealthy California landholders. Rents will eventually match the increase in income as way too much demand chases an incredible, inhumane, History Will Judge You shortage of supply. Which, amazingly, is one of the reasons this could actually pass. California's property class seem to get everything they want, even if it's voting down small and inadequate reforms like SB-50 was (it was a start but not even remotely enough). California should be thinking about absolutely nothing else that's big except fixing their housing crisis. It's so big at this point that it's actually causing most of the other major problems.
- oDot 7y agoYou write as if markets are a zero sum game, however they are most certainly not. You say the poor tenant will transfer wealth to the wealthy landlord as if the tenant is losing. However -- they are both gaining. Say the rent is $1000. Obviously, the property usage right is worth to the landlord less than $1000, otherwise he would've just used the property himself. He gains. The property usage right is worth more than $1000 to the tenant, otherwise he would've just kept the money. He gains. Both people gain. Both people get richer. Both people ended up with more than they had prior to the transaction.
- nradov 7y agoAnd what about the taxpayers? They lose. I'm not necessarily opposed to wealth transfers in principle, but they absolutely are a zero sum game.
- oDot 7y agoI was talking about the voluntary transaction part, not the taxing part, which is not voluntary in any way.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
- someonehere 7y agoWe’re due for a recession here in California. I follow the real estate gurus and they’re a bit perplexed on why we aren’t in one yet. The timing of UBI and an impending recession are a bad formula for the state and will definitely change the political landscape of California. ie likely to see some politicians voted out of office and flipping the majority.
- ahi 7y agoI think UBI is kind of dumb, but UBI on the state level is just plain stupid. If you don't control your currency, UBI is a non-starter.
- purplezooey 7y agoMaybe we should start issuing Golden State Doubloons
- zoonosis 7y agoAre you saying that a UBI should, or perhaps only can, be funded by "money printing"?
- option 7y agoEvan Low introduced this bill. He is on the ballot right now, please vote accordingly
- dave5104 7y agoSadly, I'm not in his district, so I can't vote for him.
- burlesona 7y agoI’d be a lot more interested if they’d fund it via property tax instead of VAT. Since California has such severe restrictions on housing construction, anything that puts more money in people pockets just gets absorbed by higher rent. The entire CA game is the fixed supply of housing eating up most of the economic output of individuals who aren’t grandfathered in. So if you’re going to fix it, collecting against the property owners who have spent decades greatly enriching themselves by making it prohibitively difficult for anyone new to move in would be a good start. Then when you go to try and remove the barriers to housing supply, they’d suddenly have a lot more reason to get on board (or at least get out of the way).
- gok 7y agoProp 13 essentially makes raising revenue through property taxes impossible in California.
- reaperducer 7y agoI’d be a lot more interested if they’d fund it via property tax instead of VAT. Since California has such severe restrictions on housing construction If you increase property taxes, doesn't that make housing developers less likely to build high-value, high-density housing? And don't the property tax increases on existing housing just get passed on to the renters? I've never rented in California, but I've rented in 13 other states, and in the handful of cities where I've lived during a property tax increase, the rent went up quite a bit (especially Chicago). One place even itemized it on the rent statement.
- mech1234 7y agoThe precautionary principle seems to be thrown to the wind here. The unintended consequences of such a policy are far-reaching and poorly understood. UBI has seen a lot of coverage in the media recently and gets a lot of people excited on social media. Most coverage of it is shallow, but even the most in-depth studies of it that have been performed have been too small scale to have any bearing on the reality of transforming an entire state's economy. It would be nice if we lived in a post-scarcity (or sufficiently close) economy where we could afford these things. I doubt we do.
- paulgb 7y agoAlthough both a smaller payout and a smaller state, the Alaska Permanent Fund is interesting precedent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund I agree that the CA proposal feels reckless, though.
- alistairSH 7y agoVery mixed feelings on this. I'm in favor of UBI, but the devil is in the details and this bill doesn't pass the smell test. As noted elsewhere, $1000/month for all adult residents adds up to more than the state's current budget. The bill doesn't appear to remove other welfare programs. UBI is usually touted as a moral-judgement free program that replaces all the targeted welfare programs (food stamps, housing allowances, etc). So, I'm glad people are taking UBI seriously. But, bills like this feel like a footgun. People are rightly suspicious of UBI (at minimum, it's new and untested) and bills like this do nothing to assuage their fears.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- the_gastropod 7y ago> The bill doesn't appear to remove other welfare programs And I think that is the correct move. I'd expect the need for SNAP benefits, housing assistance, etc. would decrease (probably dramatically so) after UBI's implemented. But there will always be people who need help. You can't turn a blind eye to someone in need just because they're getting $12k/yr.
- alistairSH 7y agoIn theory, any UBI program would provide an amount equal to, or greater than, whatever amount was previously being provided. So, if CA food stamps + local housing assistance = $12k, then UBI would also be $12k. Otherwise, as you say, UBI isn't enough. If this were part of a broader plan to consolidate benefits into a single program, it would make more sense. Give everybody the $1000 (or whatever amount) and if they qualify, bump that $1000 to $2000 (or whatever amount works out). The whole point of UBI is to get out of managing many programs, with the overhead those entail. And if you have a libertarian tilt, it also gets us out of dictating morals to the poor.
- dev_hacker 7y agoThere is no hope of something like this passing in the US. If it doesn't disenfranchise at least a few hated social groups its flat out un-American and the people won't stand for it. Fuck over felons, recent immigrants, black people, or someone like this and you might have a chance of getting it through. I'll grant you that California is its own weird little world, so yeah maybe its possible there, but for sure this won't fly in the US.
- randyrand 7y ago> Fuck over felons, recent immigrants, black people, or someone like this and you might have a chance of getting it through. This is surprising to me. Which recent california laws are you referring to that have done this?
- dev_hacker 7y agoAh no, I am not saying California is up to this, but the rest of the US definitely is. I am from VA and can assure you that people would not be comfortable giving money equally to say, sex offenders or black people, as their WASP neighbor here. California is not like the rest of the US at all, so I withhold my opinion on what could pass there.
- pmoriarty 7y agoMy main problem with this is that if you're poor you'll have to give up Medi-Cal (California's Medicaid program -- aka health insurance for the poor) and other state-funded benefits to be eligible. Health care spending can and has bankrupted many people with private insurance who are very well off compared to Medi-Cal recipients, so if the poor were forced to give up Medi-Cal to get $12k of UBI per year, and then spend that money on private health insurance, and spend even more of that money on food (since they'd also have to give up food stamps), it makes absolutely no economic sense for them to do that. As far as the poor are concerned, this is an attempt to get rid of Medi-Cal and substitute it with private health insurance, and same with the other state-funded programs that help the poor. The way it stands now this is an awful idea, and I'd only support it if it was truly universal and did not require the poor to give up the state support they have now. If this proposed program doesn't actually help the poor then what is the fucking point?
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago> Health care spending can and has bankrupted many people who are very well off compared to Medi-Cal recipients, so if they were forced to give up Medi-Cal to get $12k of UBI per year, and then spend that money on private health insurance, and spend even more of that money on food (since they'd also have to give up food stamps), it makes absolutely no economic sense for them to do that. So then they wouldn't do that. It says you can't get the UBI if you get Medi-Cal, it doesn't say you can't decline the UBI and continue to get Medi-Cal, right? The entire point of a UBI is that it replaces all of these hacked together assistance programs with something with less overhead (no eligibility testing bureaucracy) and less economic distortion (giving restaurant workers food assistance when they already have access to food and could better use the money for transportation or education etc.) If you like Medi-Cal, propose it as a "public option" -- instead of getting it if you're poor, you get it if you pay $6000/year or whatever it actually costs the state. Then people can take their $12,000 UBI, use $6000 to buy Medi-Cal and have $6000 left over. But then it lets people to choose not to, e.g. because their spouse's employer-subsidized private insurance would cover them for an additional $4000/year and they'd rather come out ahead by $2000. Having both is silly because it doesn't get rid of that inefficiency. If you instead wanted people to have a $12,000 UBI and $6000 in medical coverage then just give them $18,000 and let them decide whether they want to buy $6000 in medical coverage or something else. You can debate the amount of assistance but it still makes no sense to force people to buy specific things.
- madengr 7y agoThink there is an illegal immigration problem in CA now? Wait until UBI.
- papreclip 7y agoIf you buy into some of the logic I've seen kicking around recently that: >housing shortage prevents poor people from participating in centers of high productivity, which reduces their economic output then attracting as many warm bodies as possible to these "centers of productivity" will result in an explosion of wealth production
- m0zg 7y agoThe worse the better I say, as long as it doesn't spill over into other states. The long suffering CA taxpayer will wake up en masse one day, and sweep this bullshit aside, at which point CA might become livable again.
- papreclip 7y agoWhy only $1000/month, why not make it $10,000?
- bassman9000 7y agohow many people will move to Texas after this, to vote the same policies?
- m0zg 7y agoFunny how HN readers can be at the same time overwhelmingly for Andrew Yang, and against the measure that implements one of the selling points of his campaign. :-)
- dang 7y ago"HN readers" aren't a person. They're a large population sample that is divided on divisive issues the same way any other large population sample is.
- Ohn0 7y agoDo any other hackers wonder what the overhead is for collecting / enforcing a new tax (VAT)? Like others have mentioned, it seemed like the benefits of UBI were to eliminate some redundancy from similar programs that require more administration. Creating a new tax seems non-trivial, but on the other hand would be easy to ratchet up down the road.