46 ms·

How is UBI supposed to work without major price controls?

flukus 7y ago
As a general rule competition should do that, people will still buy the $1 widget over the identical $2 one. More may be need to deal with specifics though, like supply shortages from the virus or certain market segments like real estate.
- peteradio 7y ago
  I don't think proper competition exists in certain areas where people spend a decent chunk of paycheck: telecommunications/internet providers and rent (any others? Healthcare?). I think UBI would be a handout to these industries, maybe it would do some good too, I don't know.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    that may be US centric issue, and if you are doing UBI surely you need to do that alongside socialised healthcare?
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I personally don't think UBI works. Period. But some kind of financial relief may be in order to try to prevent worse things. Having no money easily creates situations where "the battle was lost because the nail was lost."
- celticninja 7y ago
  any reason or evidence for why you think it doesn't work?
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Yeah, lots of reasons and lots of what I believe is evidence, but nothing most people think makes sense. The short version is that every time humans have ever tried a "share and share alike" scheme, it's inevitably been ruined by freeloaders taking advantage of the system. The pilgrims tried this before the US was a country. They had to move to "you don't work, you don't eat." This was also basically what communism was supposed to be and that went spectacularly badly. We do have a few places where people get their share of a local natural resource. Both Alaska and at least one Middle Eastern country give all residents a check from their oil wealth. But it's tied to something in specific: Oil. So we have a good idea of how to make adjustments to the payout and under what conditions it would end. It isn't a promise of "forever." Historically, we had nuclear families with one primary breadwinner and benefits for others through that person. That's largely dying out for various reasons. We need a new system that allows for some people to work (for pay) and some to not and more or less everyone to get access to housing, health care, etc. We mostly aren't talking about that. UBI sounds like a rich persons fantasy of hush money. "We'll just cut a check and the problem will go away." Money is generally a proxy for the value of other things and one of those things is human labor. UBI actively discourages human labor and cuts the ties between money and the creation of actual value. I think this is enormously dangerous and a bad idea. Maybe some kind of expanded earned income credit would make sense. In the US, we would benefit tremendously from fixing our health care system. But I think just passing out money/resources to "everyone" has a long history of failing every time it has been tried in some fashion. It actively undermines a lot of social contracts that are the very basis for civilized life and replaces it with "You and all your friends just won the lottery and the rules don't apply to you anymore." From what I gather, about 2/3 of lottery winners are bankrupt in five years. This is another piece of evidence that you can't fix life, the universe and everything by just throwing money at it.
    - celticninja 7y ago
      Norway have done a similar thing, except they reinvested their oil income and use that to find social services for the population, prevents the money being pissed up the wall by one or two generations. I think there will be free loaders, but those exist now. Anywhere a welfare scheme exists someone will want to take advantage of it. but not the majority. I don't know the solution but I think it's worth investigating.
celticninja 7y ago
no one said it would. but I imagine that they would be an easier sell to politicians and the populace if we see more of the sort of price gouging that is going on with hand sanitizer and masks. also, morbid I know, but if we lose a lot of the older segment of the population then we also remove a significant burden on healthcare and welfare to free up money for UBI

As a general rule competition should do that, people will still buy the $1 widget over the identical $2 one. More may be need to deal with specifics though, like supply shortages from the virus or certain market segments like real estate.

peteradio 7y ago
I don't think proper competition exists in certain areas where people spend a decent chunk of paycheck: telecommunications/internet providers and rent (any others? Healthcare?). I think UBI would be a handout to these industries, maybe it would do some good too, I don't know.
- celticninja 7y ago
  that may be US centric issue, and if you are doing UBI surely you need to do that alongside socialised healthcare?

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I personally don't think UBI works. Period. But some kind of financial relief may be in order to try to prevent worse things. Having no money easily creates situations where "the battle was lost because the nail was lost."

celticninja 7y ago
any reason or evidence for why you think it doesn't work?
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Yeah, lots of reasons and lots of what I believe is evidence, but nothing most people think makes sense. The short version is that every time humans have ever tried a "share and share alike" scheme, it's inevitably been ruined by freeloaders taking advantage of the system. The pilgrims tried this before the US was a country. They had to move to "you don't work, you don't eat." This was also basically what communism was supposed to be and that went spectacularly badly. We do have a few places where people get their share of a local natural resource. Both Alaska and at least one Middle Eastern country give all residents a check from their oil wealth. But it's tied to something in specific: Oil. So we have a good idea of how to make adjustments to the payout and under what conditions it would end. It isn't a promise of "forever." Historically, we had nuclear families with one primary breadwinner and benefits for others through that person. That's largely dying out for various reasons. We need a new system that allows for some people to work (for pay) and some to not and more or less everyone to get access to housing, health care, etc. We mostly aren't talking about that. UBI sounds like a rich persons fantasy of hush money. "We'll just cut a check and the problem will go away." Money is generally a proxy for the value of other things and one of those things is human labor. UBI actively discourages human labor and cuts the ties between money and the creation of actual value. I think this is enormously dangerous and a bad idea. Maybe some kind of expanded earned income credit would make sense. In the US, we would benefit tremendously from fixing our health care system. But I think just passing out money/resources to "everyone" has a long history of failing every time it has been tried in some fashion. It actively undermines a lot of social contracts that are the very basis for civilized life and replaces it with "You and all your friends just won the lottery and the rules don't apply to you anymore." From what I gather, about 2/3 of lottery winners are bankrupt in five years. This is another piece of evidence that you can't fix life, the universe and everything by just throwing money at it.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    Norway have done a similar thing, except they reinvested their oil income and use that to find social services for the population, prevents the money being pissed up the wall by one or two generations. I think there will be free loaders, but those exist now. Anywhere a welfare scheme exists someone will want to take advantage of it. but not the majority. I don't know the solution but I think it's worth investigating.

celticninja 7y ago

no one said it would. but I imagine that they would be an easier sell to politicians and the populace if we see more of the sort of price gouging that is going on with hand sanitizer and masks. also, morbid I know, but if we lose a lot of the older segment of the population then we also remove a significant burden on healthcare and welfare to free up money for UBI