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Very naive question here. I am not an economist. I'm all for normalizing distances between haves and have nots. But why is this solution to give money? Why not

• papermachete 7y ago
  Well said, you can't buy smartphones and videogames with food coupons.
  • jedberg 7y ago
    To many poor people a smartphone is a necessity. It is their only computer and their only connection to jobs and job boards and communication with potential employers. Who are you to say a smartphone isn't the best thing a needy person can buy?
  • qqqwerty 7y ago
    The money spent on smartphones and videogames results in revenue for companies and paychecks for employees. So yeah, some people are going to spend their UBI irresponsibly. But that spending directly and immediately stimulates the economy. In contrast, we currently are dumping vast amounts of money onto corporations, banks, and investors to try prop up the economy. That money just ends up bidding up stocks, bonds, and real estate prices. The stimulative impact is minimal, and mostly results in inflating asset prices.
    • papermachete 7y ago
      Broken window fallacy. If one has money for vieogames, one has money for basic needs and needs no UBI.
• clarkevans 7y ago
  Qualified and means-tested solutions impose what we feel others need upon them. Yet, if you just provided money, they could fill the gaps they know they need and markets would emerge to satisfy those needs. For example, one may see a "smart phone" as not a necessity, but, for many it's the only computer they have and the connection to their economic world. Who are we to say that a smart phone isn't a necessity? To a worker who is on their feet all day, a very expensive pair of boots that will last years may also be a necessity. Who are we to know people's needs?
  • jariel 7y ago
    The problem is that the most in need are often the leas concientious and responsible with money. Only an anecdote but where I live in Quebec welfare is almost $1K a month, there are flats for $400, electricity is subsidized. There are dudes who live on the street and use the money for crack. Many. Now, I have no idea if this is any kind of plurality, probably not, but it's common enough. Yes 'money' is always part of the problem, but at the lower levels, it's a huge mess of social deviance, real mental issues, medical-grade psychological problems, anti-social behavior. And if you dig up just a little bit of 'the past' it's full of abuse, neglect. Now throw in the availability of drugs and alcohol and then you have some serious malaise. So for the 'working poor', it's a different story, it's hard to tell what UBI would mean. BUT - there's another way. Land reform. The avg. home price in Canada last year, increased in value literally more than the average wage. That is unsustainable and crazy. Basically it's a 'class war' between the middle class making their money from leverage, while the working poor make jack. 'Rent' and 'Mortgage' is our most gigantic expense and yet it's a 'nonproductive asset! Yes, it costs money to 'build homes' but the other bit, real-estate is a mess. Net-net-net - there should be no material gains from this. It's economically feasible to create a situation wherein 'rent is free' for everyone, and to still have the same amount of economic productivity and growth. Low-interest rates have exacerbated this problem. FYI this 'land reform' is one of the massive differences between North America and Europe: North Americans were given 'free land' to tend and owned their farms, in contrast to the serfdom they had in Europe. Another reform in the 20th century was the push to get the plebes to own their homes through mortgages. But now the weirdness of the economy has made real problems in the cost of education and homes. I think re-thinking the economics of property without going Marxist would go further than UBI which is a kind of indirect thing.
• evmar 7y ago
  Not quite the same thing but this well-regarded nonprofit gives cash instead of alternatives, and their about page talks a bit (with some citations for you to read more) about why this is more effective than alternatives: https://www.givedirectly.org/about/ https://www.givedirectly.org/about/
• dillonmckay 7y ago
  I think you are on the right track. Give everybody some discretionary amount, but also the ‘universal basics’ as you described. So, everybody has a food account, an internet account, a housing account, a healthcare account, and a ‘fun’ account for whatever. Funds cannot be intermingled, nor spent on out of category items/services.
  • jon889 7y ago
    That sounds like a lot of effort and money that will have to go into developing and enforcing that. Also it's more "nannying" than just giving people enough more to live on, and then it's up to them how they use it.
    • dillonmckay 7y ago
      Right, so if they blow it all on chocolate or Steam games, and they become ill, should they just be forced to be sick and homeless?
      • galvin 7y ago
        Depends on how healthcare and housing are handled. In most developed countries they would end up in a homeless shelter or social housing and be covered by national healthcare.
• ianai 7y ago
  Price ceilings have a very bad history. People invent things like furnished apartments with crazy costs to make up for the lost rent increases or worse. NYC has a good history as record of how price fixing can go south. Giving people vouchers for goods and services creates a lot of bloat for politicians to then run against and remove entirely. I’m for UBI because I’ve seen time and time again the market fail far too many people to be relied upon exclusively. But I don’t think it’s a wise priority right now. The first and top priority is for people to get off their butts and do their civic duties. Learn your political economic history. Learn the systems and political institutions at play. Then contribute at all levels of government: locally through to nation wide. Until that happens we’re going to be stuck with two parties that are essentially the same thing with superficial differences - or worse. Edit-oh and stop throwing your hands up anytime an outrage or corruption is revealed. It’s not acceptable for politicians to be corrupt anymore than it’s acceptable for individuals to shirk their civic duties. The one thrives on the other. And fatalism is just ridiculously destructive.
• xapata 7y ago
  We've discovered that central planning is inefficient, as it's hard for the planner to collect information about what is optimal for each person. Giving money distributes the decision-making to the people with the best capacity to make decisions on how to allocate resources. The parallel in software is management buying terrible products on others' behalf. If you want good software, you ask the users to define requirements. Imagine telling the users, "We purchased SAP, because it checks all the boxes. You might prefer something else, but we know what's best for the company. You're welcome."
  • sharkjacobs 7y ago
    Equally important is a culture which very highly values the rights of people to make non-optimal decisions for themselves.
    • xapata 7y ago
      And the ability to compare results from different stochastic processes.
• mrfusion 7y ago
  Money is unreasonably effective at letting people aquire what they need. maybe one person doesn’t want shelter but wants to save up to start a business. Everyone wants different things.
• imgabe 7y ago
  People don't become billionaires from wages, so wage caps wouldn't do anything to address inequality.
• starpilot 7y ago
  Over the years, we've found the people are better at allocating their money to serve their own needs better than the government. Wage caps just encourage hoarding capital, and accrual of wealth thru capital gains instead of wages.
• Aperocky 7y ago
  Money is all of these things you've mentioned. It is a token that has no value on its own but can exchange for values most pertinent to the perceived need of whoever that has it.
• eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  > But why is this solution to give money? Why not universal basic housing, universal basic food, universal basic internet, etc? This is a good question but contains a false dichotomy. It's perfectly possible to provide both. Basic income is not incompatible with many existing tax-paid services and subsidized goods.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mntmoss 7y ago
  Money is intrinsically related to debt and ability to pay one's debts. This has several meanings when you look at different scales of money. An individual's debts are related to near-term life needs: making rent, putting food on the table, paying bills, paying for an education, and paying to assist friends and loved ones with each of those same things. A local government has to use taxation and debt to take on major infrastructure projects and provide ongoing public services. The money represents some mix of the will of the taxpayers and creditors, plus any private interests brought on to finance a project. At an international level, money represents the trade and economic competitiveness of the nation and is a mode of diplomatic influence and trust in the nation's stability and internal control. A country that wishes to import more goods will seek a stronger currency; one that wishes to pay off debts will probably inflate their way out. The spending of the nation is reflective of the size of the government relative to the private market, and so high public spending may "crowd out" private, but it can also bolster markets by giving them confidence in demand for goods or availability of labor. And at each scale you can make cases for earmarking some things, pushing them up or down a level, or letting them be resolved through a general fund. That's the incentivization that drives the specifics of an economy. Most countries now agree that fire protection should be financed as a public good, for example, rather than having each resident contract for fire services. But with health care there is disagreement, with employment benefits there are disagreements, with education there are disagreements and so on. Basically, UBI is a statement that some amount of the public trust should be redistributed as money rather than as a specific good. This puts a lot of flexibility into the hands of the taxpayer. The arguments against whether UBI at all tend to be either "save the little people from themselves" (while wealthy investors get a pass), or "we cannot afford it" (while larger organizations are bailed out on the regular) - and topics at this scale get entangled with national character too. If in the USA one would ultimately want to evaluate the idea of UBI according to the Constitutional Framers' "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." Life - yes. Pursuit of happiness - yes. Liberty - up to interpretation, given the "money is debt" premise. In another country other principles would structure the test.