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> > Moreover, without massive changes elsewhere in society, UBI would decrease social mobility and lead to a two-class society that keeps the poor even poorer t
by jonathanstrange 7y ago
> > Moreover, without massive changes elsewhere in society, UBI would decrease social mobility and lead to a two-class society that keeps the poor even poorer than now.
> Could you elaborate on that a bit? How and why would it do that?
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on UBI myself and have merely been to a talk+discussion about it, so I'm happy to be convinced otherwise or hear opposing arguments.
I see two problems. First, a realistic UBI would be at an extremely low level, barely exceeding the existence minimum. However, it would diminish employer's willingness to treat people in unqualified low-wage jobs fairly and well (in small companies they do that a lot). They would fire and hire as they see fit, because someone fired supposedly could live easily off UBI. It seems to me that a consequence of this attitude is also that wages for those jobs would sink and some of these jobs might even degrade into unpaid "internships", based on the argument that people with UBI can take those jobs to have a purpose or for personal development, but don't need them to sustain their life. In reality many of them would still depend on those jobs, though, because UBI would be too low.
Second, UBI itself does not prevent massive capital accumulation and the continuously increasing divide between rich and poor, and it does not prevent the spreading of wealth by inheritance (as opposed to merits and work). There is no obvious reason (or at least I cannot see it) why UBI would change the current trend of increasing the gap.
Taking these two issues together, I don't see how UBI can solve society's main problem, which is this increasing gap between rich and poor and all problems that come with it regarding eduction, health care, political power distribution, social mobility, renters vs. land-owners, gentrification, etc.
I'm not an economist, but Negative Income Tax seems much better to me.
- pas 7y agoNeither am I an expert, so disclaimers all around :) The problem of too low UBI seems the biggest practical one. And if we do it somehow needs-based, then it stop being universal, which is one of the supposed advantages - that it absolutely eliminates administrative costs/problems/etc. (But of course those are very fine straw men. Rationally none of those matter. Only that we somehow synthesize a long term (eg. sustainable) strategy to solve the problems that every kind of income/wealth redistribution aims to solve.) Of course with that attitude we're quickly back to where we are now, needs based assistance programs. Plus a lot of recommendations on how to change them. One of them is that we should stop fucking around - to use the expert terminus technicus - and just give poor people money. Yes, they might even spend it on things that give them some pleasure on the very short term. They might even buy drugs. Not that they can't do that now with some extra steps. (Buy a-okay food with assistance program, sell it for cheaper, buy booze.) And you are exactly right, the inequality is again completely independent of UBI. It depends on taxes, labor's share of income, etc. UBI is a magical unicorn, it is assumed to provide everything good. Especially because it's so vague most of the time. (That's why talking about NIT is much easier, it's a rather concrete form of UBI.)
- jonathanstrange 7y agoThis is rare on the Internet nowadays, but I totally agree with everything you say. I often annoy economists by pointing out that due to the diminishing marginal utility of money any transfer of money from the rich to the poor increases overall utility. They don't like that at all. :)
- pas 7y agoI thought mainstream economists are/were fully on board with that. :o